By Peter Crowe
February 2026
For years now, the insurance industry has been told a simple story: Artificial intelligence (AI) will automate and streamline service and allow organizations to reduce staff.
But as independent agencies adjust to rising customer expectations, market complexity and an aging workforce, a different reality is emerging. AI may reduce manual work, but it does not reduce the need for skilled people. In fact, it increases it.
This is why some of the industry’s fastest-growing organizations are adding underwriting, service and operational talent rather than cutting back. In late 2025, FOCUS expanded with 30 new experienced underwriters and strengthened its leadership ranks to meet accelerated demand from carriers, managing general agents (MGAs) and organizations looking for more scalable operational capacity.
The takeaway for agencies: growth in the AI era comes from deploying the right people in the right roles and using technology to make those people more effective.
Independent agencies today face a perfect storm of fluctuating market conditions, more complex risk profiles and clients who expect speed and expertise every time they reach out. AI helps agencies capture data, automate routine tasks and improve workflow efficiency. But the competitive differentiators, such as judgment, relationship-building, responsiveness and cross-selling, remain deeply human.
When account managers and producers have more support behind the scenes, they stay focused on clients rather than administrative work. When underwriters have more hands and experience around them, decisions move faster without sacrificing quality.
Expectations are only getting higher, which is why investing in an AI strategy allows agencies to automate the mundane while recruiting the best talent in the industry to not only fulfill services but also train and manage AI agents. AI is helping us work smarter, but people are what make our business grow.
For many independent agencies, adding headcount isn’t about hiring more internal employees. It’s about partnering with specialized teams that act as an extension of the agency, providing underwriting support, customer service, accounting, catastrophe response or back-office operations without the overhead of recruiting, training or managing additional staff.
This type of flexible, high-skill staffing model has become even more important because AI has fundamentally changed the nature of insurance work. As automation removes low-value administrative tasks, agencies need more licensed talent to act on AI-generated insights, manage increased submission volumes, deliver proactive service that improves retention and support clients through catastrophes or seasonal surges. The real shift underway is not more people versus fewer people. It’s more of the right expertise, deployed at the right moments, enabled by the right technology. AI will continue to reshape how independent agencies work, but not by eliminating people. Instead, it is creating a new operational model where human expertise has an even greater impact.
CONTRIBUTORS
FOCUS President, Peter Crowe, began his career in technology consulting, in many cities and a few countries, doing system implementations, upgrades and conversions. A tech project he worked on led to an opportunity at RE/MAX, a real estate franchise company. Crowe joined RE/MAX in 2013 and while there, served in various capacities including senior vice president of marketing, communications and investor relations and executive vice president of Business and Product Strategy.
While looking for strategic opportunities for RE/MAX, Crowe found We Insure, an independent insurance agency network. In 2019, he joined We Insure as chief revenue officer. In this role, Crowe led the expansion of We Insure into 25 new states, growing the agency footprint from 90 to 190 offices in just over two years and supported the founder in a successful exit.
In 2022, Crowe took on the role of president of FOCUS (then named Team Focus Insurance Group). As president, he has been excited to get back to his tech roots and expand one of the insurance industry’s best core platforms and BPO service organizations. Crowe holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Indiana University and an MBA from the University of Denver, Daniels College of Business.
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About FOCUS
FOCUS is an insurance BPO company that provides cloud-based, core administration solutions for P&C insurance companies and MGAs. FOCUS applies decades of insurance experience to developing insurance outsourcing solutions that complement the company’s extensible InFOCUS Platform, including self-service digital portals, configuration tools, and real-time risk management functionality while the FOCUS Insurance Services’ teams deploy policy, billing, and claims solutions with intuitive automation of workflows and artificial intelligence (AI) applications via state-of-the-art cloud technologies and robust APIs. Through proven technology and quality services, FOCUS is taking the risk out of insurtech for small, mid-size, and growth-focused insurance organizations.
Media Contact:
Kim Tambo
Senior Manager, Product Marketing
Focus Insurance Services
Kim.Tambo@teamfocusins.com
http://www.teamfocusins.com