12-state agency uses AI to triage quotes but keeps human agents
Rami Sneineh leads Insurance Navy, an independent auto and non-standard insurance agency licensed in 12 states that writes everything from standard policies to classic and luxury vehicle coverage. The agency pulls quotes from multiple carriers and tells customers which policy fits their driving history and budget. He explains why they use AI to speed quote triage but declined to automate claims conversations, preferring human empathy after an accident.
Make your agency’s public information accurate and easy to find because AI assistants will surface whatever is already public; outdated licensing or coverage details will follow you into every recommendation. Prioritise visibility and human conversations for claims rather than rushing to replace agents with chatbots.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
Insurance Navy started as a small independent agency built around the idea that shopping for auto insurance shouldn’t require a person to compare five browser tabs and guess which quote is honest. Over the past two decades that grew into a network of agents licensed across 12 states, still writing everything from standard auto to classic and luxury vehicle coverage. What sets us apart is that we’re not tied to one carrier. A customer walks in, we pull quotes from multiple insurers, and we tell them straight which one actually fits their driving history and budget instead of pushing whichever policy pays us the highest commission.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Referrals and repeat customers still make up the bulk of what comes through our doors, people who had a good claims experience and sent a friend or came back after their policy renewed.
Walk-in traffic at our physical locations brings in a steady stream too, especially in neighborhoods where people still prefer sitting across from an agent instead of clicking through a quote form. What I’d like to see grow is more first-time buyers finding us online before they ever need a claim, since that’s usually when people make rushed decisions and end up underinsured.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
We use AI now to sort through incoming quote requests and flag which ones need a licensed agent’s eyes first, mostly based on vehicle type or driving record complexity, and it’s cut down the time our team spends on manual triage.
Where it fell short was claims conversations. We tried using an automated chat flow to walk customers through initial claim details after an accident, and it just didn’t work. People calling after a crash need someone who can hear the panic in their voice and slow the conversation down, not a script.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
Customers are showing up with a lot more pre-shopped knowledge than they did even two years ago, quoting coverage minimums and deductible ranges they pulled from somewhere online before they ever call us.
We’ve started seeing a handful of leads mention they asked ChatGPT or a similar tool for insurance recommendations first, though it’s still a small slice compared to search and referrals. What’s interesting is those customers tend to ask sharper questions right out of the gate, which honestly makes the conversation faster on our end.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
I’d tell them to spend the next year making sure their agency’s information is accurate and easy to find wherever people are searching, because AI assistants are pulling from whatever’s already public and if your licensing details or coverage areas are outdated somewhere, that mistake follows you into every recommendation those tools make.
I’d tell them to ignore the pressure to automate the actual customer relationship. Every agency I talk to is racing to bolt a chatbot onto their front page, but insurance is still a conversation about someone’s car, their family, their risk tolerance. Chase the visibility, skip the impulse to replace the agent.
Thank you to Rami Sneineh and the team at Insurance Navy for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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