News
Liberty Mutual Insurance Launches First-of-its-Kind Carrier-Backed Conversational AI Quoting App in ChatGPT for Auto Insurance
Liberty Mutual Insurance, the 7th largest auto insurer in the US, has launched a first-of-its-kind carrier-backed conversational AI auto insurance quoting application.
The app allows ChatGPT users to obtain an auto insurance quote from Liberty Mutual in minutes through a conversational, chat-based interaction, rather than a traditional online form. Quotes are now available via the app in ChatGPT for drivers in seven states (Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, Utah and Wisconsin), and Liberty Mutual plans to offer conversational AI quoting in more than 40 states by the end of the year.
"We are excited to extend access to our products and provide additional platforms for customers to find great coverage at a great price. Consumers have more choice than ever in how they choose to shop, including emerging channels like conversational AI and large language model (LLM) platforms," said Tyler Asher, Liberty Mutual Chief Distribution and Marketing Officer, US Retail Markets. "As this shopping process continues to evolve, it's beneficial to customers that we meet them wherever they are, leveraging the newest technology to simplify the buying experience and deliver personalized coverage faster and more intuitively than ever before."
Highest-paid broker executives - Business Insurance
Executives at the largest publicly traded brokerages saw significant variations in their total compensation last year.
All but one insurer executives saw a double-digit percentage increase in total compensation last year.
Nationwide Reaches Reinsurance Agreement with MassMutual on Universal Life Policy Block
Nationwide has reached an agreement with MassMutual to reinsure a block of fixed Universal Life insurance policies, comprising more than 30,000 policyowners.
The transaction, which is expected to close in Q2, 2026, has a total face value of nearly $16 billion and will increase Nationwide Financial's reserves by $6 billion. Nationwide expects to be able to take on this additional business without adding staff.
"This agreement represents a tremendous opportunity to put our strong capital position to work and grow our life insurance business, which was designated the third largest writer of life insurance in 2025," said Kirt Walker, CEO of Nationwide. "Bringing together two strong brands allows us to protect more Americans with life insurance."
MassMutual will continue to administer these policies and remain the point of contact for policyowners.
"This deal marks a continued step forward for our life insurance business, which has established itself as a strong and stable industry leader with a deep portfolio of protection solutions," said Craig Hawley, president of Nationwide Financial.
Sidley Austin LLP served as Nationwide's legal counsel on the transaction.
Climate/Resilience/Sustainability
Uninsured flood losses could top $1 trillion in worst-case scenarios, Moody's warns
The outlook is stark: $1 trillion in potential uninsured losses in severe scenarios, rising 25% by 2050 if nothing changes.
Aggregated uninsured residential flood losses across the US could exceed $375 billion under a 1-in-100-year flood scenario and surpass $1 trillion in rarer, higher-severity events, according to a new interactive whitepaper from Moody's.
The analysis provides county-level granularity on flood exposure and insurance take-up across the US, revealing a risk landscape that extends well beyond the coastal states most commonly associated with flood damage.
The findings expose a growing protection gap shifting catastrophic financial risk onto households, local governments and public balance sheets nationwide.
AI in Insurance
AI data centers face mounting insurance risks, Swiss Re warns
The data centers powering artificial intelligence infrastructure are growing so large and complex that the insurance industry is struggling to cover the financial risks they carry, according to a report by the Swiss Re Institute.
Authored by Jonathan Anchen, head of market intelligence, and James Finucane, senior economist, both at the Swiss Re Institute, the report found that construction costs for a single data center site can reach US$20 billion – a figure that can double once servers and graphics processing units are installed.
Global insurance premiums tied to data centers are expected to climb to US$24.2 billion by 2030, up from US$10.6 billion, driven by growing demand from financing institutions requiring coverage matching the full cost of construction.
Hippo Announces AI Service Representative Hannah to Deliver Faster, Effortless 24/7 Customer Service
Hippo today announced it is scaling Hannah, its AI-powered service representative, the latest step in Hippo's multi-year investment in technology to improve the customer experience, drive operational efficiency, and support profitable growth.
So far in 2026, Hannah has handled more than 28,000 service calls, replacing interactive voice response (IVR) menus with a natural, conversational AI concierge that greets every Hippo customer, authenticates them, answers questions, and seamlessly transfers them to a licensed agent whenever necessary.
Hannah, Hippo's AI service representative, handles 100% of inbound customer service calls — greeting customers, detecting intent, authenticating identity, and resolving or routing calls to a licensed agent when needed.
"Hannah isn't a chatbot, she's a digital member of our service team," said Kyle Ramsay, Hippo's Chief Product and Artificial Intelligence Officer. "Built with Hippo's modern APIs, real-time data, and the latest AI models, Hannah can serve a growing range of customer needs. Alongside Clara in claims, Hannah reflects our broader strategy to apply AI agents across the insurance lifecycle to efficiently deliver seamless customer experiences."
AI-Powered Service: Always On, Always Intelligent
Research
Summer 2026 Travel Outlook: Where Americans Are Going, What They're Spending, and How They're Protecting Themselves
As summer approaches, new trends are emerging among American travelers, according to Squaremouth, the leading travel insurance comparison site.
Where Travelers Are Headed: Among insured travelers, international travel dominates the charts. The top ten most-insured destinations for June and July 2026 are:
1.United States
- Italy
3.Canada
France
Spain
Mexico
Greece
Bahamas
United Kingdom
Japan
InsurTech/M&A/Finance💰/Collaboration
Insurance platform Corgi valued at $2.6 billion in latest funding round
AI insurance platform Corgi said on Thursday it raised $106 million in a funding round led by investment firm TCV that valued it at $2.6 billion.
The funding round underscores strong investor appetite for startups using artificial intelligence to modernize the financial services sector.
Corgi CEO Nico Laqua said the company was profitable last month and that the new funding would help the company expand into additional segments, including trucking, small business and sports. Corgi is an insurance technology company that provides underwriting, claims handling and embedded insurance products for commercial customers.
Fraud
Insurance Mogul Greg Lindberg Gets 12 Years for $2 Billion Fraud - Bloomberg
North Carolina investment firm founder Greg Lindberg was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison for siphoning more than $2 billion in reserves backing insurance policies and using the proceeds to pay for jets, mansions and a 214-foot yacht.
Lindberg, 56, pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiring to defraud insurers and thousands of policy holders in one of the largest insurance frauds in US history, federal prosecutors said in a statement. He was separately convicted at trial of conspiring to bribe the elected state insurance commissioner and replace a senior regulator who oversaw his companies.
Insurers grapple with new fraud threat: AI-generated images
Insurance fraud, unfortunately, is inevitable. A certain amount of fraud is priced into the product. The goal for insurers is to find the right balance – focusing on fraud prevention for the biggest cases without alienating trusted customers.
But the AI age has introduced a new source of fraud that threatens that balance by making fraud simpler, easier and more widespread: images that have been altered, or even completely synthetically generated, using AI for the purpose of filing a fraudulent insurance claim.
AI images are a rapidly growing threat in claims fraud. But AI also offers a solution for spotting these fake photos.
Insurance fraud costs US consumers an estimated $308.6 billion a year, and about 1 in 10 property-casualty insurance losses includes fraud. Last year, a major short-term lodging rental company found that one of its hosts had used digitally manipulated images to falsely accuse a renter of causing thousands of dollars' worth of damage.
Claims
One Million New-Car Buyers Have Left the Market, and the Ripple Effects Are Reaching Collision Shops - Autobody News
Stagnant new-vehicle sales, rising average vehicle age, and a fleet skewing older and more complex are converging on collision repair.
The U.S. auto industry is contending with a structural shift in consumer demand that is reshaping the fleet collision shops work on every day. Roughly one million prospective new-car buyers have exited the market since the start of the decade, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis published May 27, and industry analysts do not expect them to return soon.
Major manufacturers including General Motors, Ford Motor, and Toyota have said they are planning for new-vehicle sales to shrink or stagnate in 2026, as consumers push back against average transaction prices that have climbed to around $50,000, according to the Journal. Persistent inflation, rising fuel costs, and elevated interest rates are cited as the primary forces keeping buyers out of showrooms.
For collision repairers, the downstream effect is a vehicle fleet that is getting older, staying on the road longer, and arriving at shops with a more complex and variable repair profile than at any point in the past decade.
A FLEET THAT KEEPS AGING
The Journal cited S&P Global data showing the average vehicle on U.S. roads is now about 13 years old, a record high. S&P Global Mobility's most recent published analysis puts the figure at 12.8 years as of 2025, with CCC Intelligent Solutions projecting the average will reach 13 years in 2026. The average age of passenger cars specifically has climbed to 14.5 years, while light trucks stand at 11.9 years, according to S&P Global Mobility.
Podcast Sponsor
Audio Version - 'Connected: The Podcast' --- Sponsored by Pulse Podcasts
The ‘Connected’ Podcast by Alan Demers and in dedication of Stephen Applebaum, is a condensed audio version of the day's ‘Connected' newsletter, a daily scan of all the happenings in the world of Insurance & InsurTech News.
Pulse Podcasts: Introduce a new way for your audience to hear your voice! We are a podcast creation service that helps businesses turn their written content, like blog posts and news articles, into beautiful podcasts. Our platform writes the script, records the voices, and mixes the audio to create engaging content for your audience. It's affordable and has super-fast turnaround!
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE BELOW