Rob Berkley, CEO of W. R. Berkley Corporation, said the firm is seeing efficiency gains of more than 20% from artificial intelligence in underwriting, with efforts largely focused on underwriting workbenches and digitising processes from intake through to quote.
Speaking during W. R. Berkley Corporation’s Q2 2026 earnings call, Berkley said he sees plenty of upside for AI to further improve underwriting operations, adding that he is reasonably confident there’s “significant additional juice to squeeze out of that.”
He also highlighted AI’s potential to improve claims operations, explaining that the firm is using AI and other technologies to move towards straight-through processing where appropriate.
“Ultimately, if you have a look at our claims profile, approximately 50% of our claims settle for $5,000 or less. There are lots of examples where we are showing up to a situation with a sledgehammer when a fly swatter is really what is required. Using some of this technology where appropriate, we are able to deliver a better solution for claimants in a more timely way,” said Berkley.
He added, “More to come on both of those fronts. We are making good progress and we are, as an organisation, very excited about our ability to reallocate people’s time in other directions and utilise the technology to drive these improvements.”
Berkley emphasised that he expects the firm to generate returns from its AI investments, while recognising both its strengths and limitations.
He noted, “We are certainly not in a position that we are going to go out and try and create our own large language model. For our purposes, the notion that we are going to try and recreate what the likes of an Anthropic or OpenAI or anyone else and spend tens of billions of dollars, that is not our strength. What is our strength is to take the tools that are out there and then layer on our own approach on top of that. What is our strength is to use our 60 different laboratories, each one of our businesses, to be experimenting with tools and then to coalesce around the best solutions and leverage those.”
