MS Transverse Insurance Group

Candace Bourg

Intelligent Assistance Advocate

Candace Bourg is Vice President and Senior Program Underwriting Director at MS Transverse Insurance Group. She brings nearly 25 years of experience in the insurance industry, specializing in program underwriting and multi-line commercial insurance. Bourg is committed to professional excellence and developing insurance solutions that support long-term business resilience.

Insurance is a business of acronyms and AI is now chief among them. If you are not familiar with AI, you either have your head in the sand or have intentionally ignored it. Either way, I implore you to take notice. I too was skeptical. As a GenXer who entered this industry in the file room, I thought it improbable that Artificial Intelligence could possibly comprehend the complexities of insurance. I think that belief was rooted in fear of AI making underwriters less relevant and therefore less employable. After spending more time understanding its tremendous value, I think of AI as a friend, not a foe.

I started using it for personal interests at first. I used Google Lens to find visual matches for an expensive lamp I wanted to buy at a lower price. Next, I used Microsoft Copilot to spiff up my LinkedIn profile. Then my organization implemented Claude AI. I was a little nervous to try Claude at first. I started with a more lighthearted prompt -- Transform insurance (a seemingly dry subject) into something fascinating. Claude immediately returned a scintillating summary detailing the origin of insurance some 4,000 years ago with the ancient Babylonians, its evolution in Edward Lloyd’s coffee shop and becoming what we know today. Claude also threw in a few facts about unique coverages (celebrity body parts, alien abduction and hole-in-one) and concluded with a discussion on the math of how pooled risk and investment income created the world’s economic safety net. This immediately gave me hope that Claude and I were going to be allies.

Since that initial experience, I have come to think of Claude as less AI and more IAintelligent assistant. Learning to craft and refine prescriptive prompts (aka instructions) is the secret to success. This has enabled me to save many hours of time reading and researching various issues. Below are a few scenarios where this intelligent assistant has made me more effective and efficient.

• Compare and contrast various competitors in a specific market niche.

• Summarize loss descriptions to a maximum of two words and create a pivot table to show top causes of loss by total incurred.

• Review an executive summary against more detailed artifacts to look for inconsistencies and gaps.

Regardless of which specific AI tool(s) you use, think of it as a highly capable assistant who needs your specific expertise and instructions to deliver the most value. Also, much like an assistant’s work, you should review its output for accuracy before sharing it with a broader audience. If the output is incorrect, it is your reputation on the line, not AI’s.