On his first day in the insurance industry, Bryan Falchuk's boss asked him if he had heard of "this Internet thing." Agents, the boss predicted, would be gone. A quarter-century later, the share of U.S. property/casualty premium written through intermediaries has held almost constant at 57-58% - proof that "this Internet thing" did not eliminate the agent channel.
Now the same prediction is being made with a different word: AI. Falchuk argues in a recent analysis that this time may be different. "AI is not the Internet," he writes. Unlike ecommerce, which is a transaction layer, AI can understand context - interviewing a consumer, pulling in third-party data, and mapping a risk picture informed by patterns across millions of other people and businesses. That, Falchuk says, is what a good agent does, but AI can do it with far more information at hand.
Falchuk's piece is a direct counterpoint to an article from Matteo Carbone, who argued that buyer demand for agents will protect the channel from AI disruption. Falchuk agrees on demand. He disagrees on what that means for the people inside the channel.
The demand-side argument misses the point
"Matteo's piece is a defense of buyer demand for the agent channel - the case that people will keep seeking out an intermediary rather than transacting directly," Falchuk wrote. "I do not dispute that. If that were the whole claim, I would agree with it without reservation."
The real question, Falchuk argues, is not whether buyers want guidance - they do - but who or what supplies that guidance once a buyer arrives. "A channel can have entirely stable buyer demand and still be staffed by a fraction of today's headcount or partly staffed by AI standing in the traditional agent role," he wrote. "None of that tells us who or what is on the other end of the conversation once the buyer arrives. That is the question I am actually asking."
People will change, and soon
Falchuk also pushes back on the argument that buyers stick with a human because they want someone to blame if something goes wrong - what Carbone called "accountable delegation." He doubts that is the primary reason buyers choose agents. "What looks more likely is that buyers are offloading the cognitive burden of a complicated, infrequent decision to someone they trust," he wrote. "If delegation is about trusting something to carry the research and judgment so you do not have to do the work yourself, that is a need AI can plausibly meet - arguably one it is already meeting in other corners of people's financial and personal lives."
The bigger shift, Falchuk says, is AI that identifies insurance needs proactively, without anyone typing a request. "An AI system already managing a small business's books, payroll, contracts, and supply chain does not need to be told about a coverage gap," he said. "It can see the exposure in data it already has, and surface it before anyone asks."
Meanwhile, human agents are already leaning on AI to handle operational load, track changing rates and underwriting appetite, and manage client needs - allowing an agency to produce the same amount of business with fewer people. Combined with an aging agent workforce that is retiring faster than new agents are entering, the channel can hold its market share even as the number of humans doing the work shrinks.
Technology is moving faster than the internet did
Falchuk argues the timeline is shorter than many expect. "Almost none of what we now see as threat to agents existed three or four years," he wrote. "These technologies are not improving on a multi-year cycle; they are taking real steps forward every few months." He puts visible change inside five years, with first signs within two. For professionals in insurance, this means the question is less whether AI will alter distribution and more how quickly it will happen, and who inside the channel will be doing the work.
Why this matters for insurance professionals
"The agent channel will still be here," Falchuk wrote. "Many of today's agents, and the way they work, will not be - and we will not need a decade to see it." The implication for anyone working in insurance distribution is clear: the buyer demand for guidance and support will not disappear, but the supply side - the people, the tools, and the number of humans doing the job - will shift faster than many expect. AI for insurance is not a five-year story. The first signs are already visible within the next two years, especially as AI Agents & Automation absorb more of the research and decision-making that are currently the agent's job. The core challenge now for agents and brokers is to redefine what they bring to the relationship that an AI agent cannot supplement.
Bryan Falchuk is author of the book "The Future of Insurance" and host of the podcast "The Future of Insurance".
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