“The Connective Thread” explores how carriers, agencies, brokerages, and insurtechs can close the AI adoption gap by designing tools around real agent workflows, trust and human expertise

NEW YORK, June 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cake & Arrow, an experience design and product innovation agency for the insurance industry, today announced the release of The Connective Thread: From Agent and Broker Research to a New Design Vision for AI-Enabled Insurance Work, a new report examining how agents and brokers are using AI today and what it will take to design AI tools they will actually trust, adopt and use.

Grounded in frontline research with agents and brokers, the report identifies a widening gap between the insurance industry’s investment in AI and the realities of adoption among the people expected to use it. While carriers, agencies, brokerages, and insurtechs are investing heavily in AI transformation, many agents and brokers are still experimenting on their own, navigating fragmented systems, inconsistent guidance and limited organizational support.

“The agents we spoke with are not resistant to AI,” said Josh Levine, Founder & CEO of Cake & Arrow. “They’re curious, resourceful, and already finding ways to use it. But too often, they’re being left to figure it out on their own. The opportunity for the industry is not simply to build more AI tools. It’s to design AI that fits how agents actually work, earns their trust and strengthens the human relationships at the center of insurance.”

The Connecting Thread is based on in-depth qualitative research with 16 agents and brokers across 13 states, representing a range of roles, firm sizes, business environments, and experience levels from six months to more than 30 years in the industry. The research surfaced four consistent findings: AI is spreading without a clear roadmap; agents are seeing real efficiency gains, but usage remains shallow; agents want integration, not more automation; and human expertise remains the multiplier AI cannot replace.

The report also introduces Adjacent, a design concept for an AI sidebar built around the way agents and brokers actually work. Rather than adding another disconnected tool to already crowded workflows, Adjacent is envisioned as a connective layer across the systems agents use every day, including their agency management system, CRM, email, meetings, documents and carrier portals. Designed to sit beside existing workflows, Adjacent demonstrates how AI can help account teams prepare, decide, draft, follow up and update records while keeping humans in control.
“Technology doesn’t roll itself out,” Levine added. “For AI to make a meaningful difference in insurance distribution, it has to solve real problems inside real workflows. That requires more than technical capability. It requires intentional design.”

For carriers, agencies, brokerages, and insurtechs, the report offers a design-forward way to think about AI: as connective tissue across fragmented workflows, a support system for agents at every experience level and a tool that strengthens the human relationships at the center of insurance.

The report outlines five principles for designing AI that agents and brokers will actually trust and use:

Design for integration. Combat fragmentation
Design for “trust but verify”
Design to keep the human at the forefront
Design for the workflow, not the moment
Design for knowledge transfer, not just efficiency

Together, the findings, Adjacent concept, and design principles point to a more human-centered path for AI adoption in insurance, one that recognizes agents and brokers not as barriers to transformation, but as the people best positioned to shape what useful AI should become.

The Connective Thread: From Agent and Broker Research to a New Design Vision for AI-Enabled Insurance Work is available now. Download the full report at https://go.cakeandarrow.com/the-connective-thread-agent-broker-ai-design.

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