INFUSE Recap: Why broker-carrier connectivity matters in 2026

Insurance runs on trust, and no amount of new technology changes that. That was the starting point of our recent INFUSE webinar on broker-carrier connectivity, featuring James Martin, Global Enterprise Director at AXA, Sladjana Draskovic, Portfolio Delivery Manager at Vega IT, and Kevin Smith, Senior Vice President at Relation Insurance Services. The panel was equally clear that trust and technology aren't in tension, they just need to be sequenced correctly: people first, tools second.

Bad Data In, Bad Decisions Faster

The clearest illustration was data. Sladjana argued that most of the friction in broker-carrier workflows starts upstream, with inconsistent submissions: a 50-page PDF formatted differently every week forces someone to manually hunt for data points, and errors follow from there.

Her fix is what she calls a submission API: a digital bridge that filters structured data, unstructured documents, and compliance rules before anything reaches a human — much like a bouncer checking not just your ID, but whether you're actually on the list.

As she put it: “We have to focus on data. If you put the rubbish data in, you're just making bad decisions faster.”

Only once that foundation is solid does AI add real value through sanctions checks, business rule validation, and submission triage rather than being bolted onto messy data and producing faster bad decisions.

Service, Not Price, Is the New Differentiator

That upstream discipline matters more as client expectations shift. With the market softening on some lines, Kevin Smith noted that price is no longer the main lever...service is. Service tends to suffer when teams are stretched thin.

“What's the number one reason service starts to fall off or is lacking on our side? Not enough time and not enough resources. That's exactly where technology and some of these AI solutions are able to help.” he said.

Clients want quicker responses, advisors who've done their homework, and decision support rather than raw data. The tools helping here — comparative raters, exposure mapping, policy dashboards — succeed by giving advisors back time to actually advise, not by replacing them.

Two Cautionary Tales

Smith offered two examples from past projects: a beautifully designed quoting platform that failed because carriers simply wouldn't log into yet another system, and a broker-facing API that hadn't been properly vetted, which capped auto-quote rates at 40–50%.

Both were eventually fixed, but not with more engineering, They were fixed with relationship conversations that got carriers to adjust their requirements. The lesson each panelist returned to: technology projects fail when they're designed in isolation from the people who have to use them, and they succeed when relationships and systems are built together.

What Comes Next

Looking ahead, James Martin framed the industry's task in three parts: invest in people's skills alongside the tools themselves, make sure you're solving a real problem rather than an imagined one, and move faster, since long pilot cycles risk shipping technology that's already behind the curve by the time it launches.

As Martin put it: “People come first, and the tools that we're using and the tools that we're creating are there to make things better for those people.”

The Bottom Line

The core belief across all three speakers was the same: better data and smarter workflows aren't the end goal. They're what buy back the time to do the part of the job that actually builds trust — understanding clients, advising them well, and getting decisions right.

Watch the full webinar here.