The LIC BulletStraight to the point!
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May 2026
Why Words Matter: A Cautionary Tale Regarding Artificial Intelligence
By Dean Lambert
Executive Director, LIC
I attended a roundtable discussion about artificial intelligence at the recent LIMRA Life Insurance & Annuity Conference that felt strikingly familiar. The session was titled, "Beyond the Bot: What AI Can Never Automate in Life Insurance."
The topic itself is of course quite prevalent in business today. The familiarity was more with the unconscious word translation that one person, and then several....
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Industry News
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If You're in Final Expense, Join Us in St. Louis
The LIC Final Expense Workshop is THE place to network, learn, and pick up ideas and solutions focused on maximizing final expense profitability. Join us June 16 – 17, 2026, at the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark with our host, RGA. See the agenda and preliminary attendee list here.
Video: Dean Lambert describes the upcoming Final Expense Workshop.
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Agentic AI Could Help US Life Insurers Narrow the Coverage Gap
Analysis by Deloitte of data on barriers for US consumers to purchase life insurance suggests that agentic AI could help remove these barriers. "It can communicate with cultural nuance, educate in easy-to-understand language, and prompt action at the time of a life event."
More AI News:
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Life Insurers Face a New Longevity Reality
In a guest commentary in Insurance Innovation Reporter, Lindsay Hanson of John Hancock discusses research and implications surrounding increasing longevity and the disconnect between healthspan and lifespan.
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The ROI of Vacation Time
Organizations that encourage employee time off see real benefits in retention and performance - yet only 54% of employees use their allotted PTO. Building a healthy vacation culture should be a priority for insurance leaders, especially heading into the summer.
"The ROI of Vacation Time," by Jack Walsh of Jacobson Group, offers a five-step guide to help leaders invest in their team's long-term health and productivity.
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BetterLife Partners with Sons of Norway
BetterLife announced a new partnership with Sons of Norway, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. Upon completion, Sons of Norway members and lodges will integrate with BetterLife, strengthening BetterLife's ability to promote well-being and community service. BetterLife will now serve more than 400 communities nationwide.
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Life Insurance Sales Surge 7% in 2025, but the Work Isn't Over
InsuranceNewsNet covered LIMRA's LinkedIn Live titled, "Understanding the Elusive Life Insurance Consumer."
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Intermediary Distribution: Navigating a Moving Marketplace
InsuranceNewsNet covered the latest LIMRA and NAILBA "Inside the Intermediary" study, conducted with more than 60 brokerage general agency and independent marketing organization respondents.
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Annuities Boom As Insurance, Wealth And Retirement Converge
Panelists participating in a Bloomberg Intelligence webinar discussed the drivers contributing to record annuity sales.
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Affordability Still Dominates Americans' Financial Worries
Gallup's annual Economy and Personal Finance survey found Americans four top financial concerns are inflation and the cost of energy, housing, and healthcare. A record 55% of surveyed Americans say their finances are getting worse.
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Millennial Investors are Ready to Bring their Advisor to the Family Table. Baby Boomers, Not so Much
As the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history gets underway and Baby Boomers advance deeper into their retirement journey, a striking generational divide is emerging. Younger investors actively want a financial advisor to serve as a facilitator for cross-generational family planning discussions, while older investors are largely declining to take that step, according to a new Advisor Authority study, powered by the Nationwide Retirement Institute.
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Homesteaders Launches 'Your Journey Forward' Aftercare Program
Homesteaders Life Company, a national leader in preneed funeral funding, recently announced the launch of Your Journey Forward, a thoughtfully curated aftercare program designed to support families through grief while gently introducing the value of preplanning.
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Redefining Life Insurance for a New Era of Trust and Protection
Life insurance has existed in the U.S. for generations, but the dynamics around purchasing it are changing, according to a recent InsuranceNewsNet article.
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Harnessing the Human Side of Transformations
Applying the principles of behavioral science to engage leaders and employees in a change program leads to better performance and more lasting results, according to a BCG report.
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Zinnia's Zahara Policy Admin System Adds FIA Chassis
Zinnia, a leading life insurance and annuity technology company, today announced the addition of a pre-configured fixed indexed annuity (FIA) chassis with support for Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWB), further accelerating carriers' speed to market. Zahara's FIA chassis is designed to help carriers move efficiently from product concept to launch by providing a robust, configurable foundation.
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Benekiva Publishes 2026 Blueprint for Modern, Compassionate, and Connected Claims
A recently published research report from Benekiva, The 2026 Blueprint for Modern, Compassionate, and Connected Claims, offers perspectives from claims, operations, and technology leaders across the life and annuity industry, including several voices from organizations within the LIC community.
The report reflects what practitioners are seeing day-to-day: increasing complexity, rising customer expectations, and where transformation efforts are succeeding (or getting stuck).
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Ethos and Banner Life Expand Offering to Bring Final Expense Coverage to More Families
Ethos, a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to democratize access to life insurance, announced an expansion of its relationship with Banner Life Insurance Company, a leading provider of term life insurance, to offer two new Ethos-branded whole life insurance products, Simplified Issue Whole Life and Guaranteed Issue Whole Life through Ethos' technology platform. The collaboration marks a deepening of the two companies' relationship and extends Ethos' suite of final expense solutions to even more families across the country.
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Smart Systems, Blind Spots: Rethinking Insurance for the AI Era
A newly published paper explores how AI is affecting the insurance industry with respect to coverage. "Smart Systems, Blind Spots: Rethinking Insurance for the AI Era" was authored by Gallagher Re's lead NA Cybersecurity Analyst Katrina Hill (with support across many GRe functions) along with AI MGA Testudo and MIT.
It is an approachable and practical explanation of how emerging causes of loss such as deepfakes and data poisoning expose gaps in existing Cyber, Tech, PL and CGL policies, and the questions insurance companies need to be considering.
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Upcoming LIC Events
LIC Final Expense Workshop
Hosted by RGA, St. Louis, MO
June 16 – 17, 2026
Networking, research, and strategies for managing profitability in final expense.
LIC Artificial Intelligence Webinar
Tuesday, July 14, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. Eastern
Presented by Jeff Shaw, Chris Campbell (BetterLife), and Eric Johansson (Liberty Bankers Insurance Group)
LIC Financial & Tax Accounting Committee Virtual Meeting
Thursday, July 23, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Eastern
LIC Summer CEO Forum (Reserved for insurance company CEOs)
Quebec City, Canada
August 25 – 27, 2026
LIC Investment & Capital Management Forum
Hosted by Catholic Life, San Antonio, TX
September 23 – 24, 2026
2026 LIMRA Annual Conference
Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, Grapevine, TX
September 27 – 29, 2026
LIC Members Reception on opening night. LIC Members qualify for member registration rates.
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LIC 2026 Premier Sponsors
Thank you to our LIC Premier Sponsors, who support all of LIC's activities throughout the year.
Parkway Advisors
Parkway Advisors is focused on being the best and most respected provider of service in the insurance industry. Parkway offers asset management, consulting, and statutory investment reporting services that are customized to the needs of each insurance client. Through Parkway's emphasis on personal service, custom solutions, and strong communication, our clients have enjoyed historically strong performance success, especially during the financial crisis and the low interest environment that has followed. www.parkwayadvisors.com
iPipeline
iPipeline is a leading provider of low code, cloud-based software solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry. Through our SSG Digital, end-to-end platform, we provide process automation and seamless integration between every participant in our ecosystem including carriers, agents, general agencies, advisors, broker-dealers, RIAs, banks, securities/mutual fund firms, and their consumers on a global basis. Our innovative solutions include pre-sales support, new business and underwriting, policy administration, point-of-sale execution of applications, post-sale support, data analysis, reporting, user-driven configuration, consumer delivery and self-service, and agency and firm management. www.ipipeline.com
Equisoft
Equisoft is a business-first technology company dedicated to helping insurance and wealth management organizations reach their goals. Specialized expertise: Over 25 years of experience helping small and mid-sized life insurers & fraternals solve their biggest challenges through digital transformation. www.equisoft.com
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About The LIC Bullet
The Bullet is the official e-newsletter of the Life Insurers Council, which has been providing networking and practical business solutions for life insurers since 1910. As a council of LIMRA and LOMA, LIC serves the unique needs of small to midsize member companies, offering a personal network of peers with practical solutions to shared challenges. The Bullet delivers immediate and relevant industry news and editorial.
LIC E-News Online Community: The LIC Bullet is posted in the LIC E-News online community at LICConnect, where we welcome dialogue and input from our readers. All Bullet subscribers have access to this forum, and others can request access by contacting lic@loma.org.
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Feature Editorial (Full Text)
Why Words Matter: A Cautionary Tale Regarding Artificial Intelligence
By Dean Lambert, Executive Director, LIC
I attended a roundtable discussion about artificial intelligence at the recent LIMRA Life Insurance & Annuity Conference that felt strikingly familiar. The session was titled, "Beyond the Bot: What AI Can Never Automate in Life Insurance."
The topic itself is of course quite prevalent in business today. The familiarity was more with the unconscious word translation that one person, and then several, and eventually almost everyone made. It seemed to change the conversation from one of potential and promise, to fear and uncertainty.
The word is "replace," which was casually substituted for "automate." Listen for it the next time someone speaks on the topic of what AI can do for the future of business. I've seen this false correlative before. Not in insurance, but the funeral profession, with which I was involved for 30 years.
A Brief Detour (With a Purpose)
For decades, funeral directors maintained a business model that included planning a funeral with a casket, vault, one or two days of visitation and a service at the funeral home or a house of worship, and a funeral procession involving a couple of limos, maybe a flower car, and burial with a committal service.
In the early 1960s, a San Francisco author name Jessica Mitford wrote The American Way of Death, accusing the "noble trade" of taking advantage of people at their lowest emotional point with a lack of transparency, limiting choices, and citing requirements that did not exist. She promoted cremation, and this struck fear in the funeral profession because it disrupted a 100-year-old model.
Funeral service is a localized industry, so the prominent state and national funeral trade associations united to counteract this "attack." The message branded cremation is "less than," "disrespectful," even "immoral." The prevailing messages by both sides was "burial versus cremation," with the funeral profession citing "traditional" funerals as proper memorialization. Even clergy were complicit, citing religious objections to not having a person's earthly, casketed remains present at funerals.
What followed was predictable. Consumers felt pressured and mistrusted the industry. Forward-thinking entrepreneurs hedged consumers' growing acceptance of cremation by opening low-cost direct cremation "societies." The profession unintentionally accelerated the very shift it feared. Today, over 63% of Americans choose cremation, a number expected to reach 80% by 2045 - not because cremation replaced burial (or, "traditional" funerals), but because funeral professionals and the entire industry failed to explain how cremation could coexist and even augment the traditional model.
Cremation and burial were never mutually exclusive, but the fear within the industry revealed itself in the consumer marketplace. This was a level of disruption few businesses could endure, much less one steeped in highly emotional and traditional rituals.
Parallels to AI in Insurance and Financial Services
Is a similar dynamic now playing out in our industry? Let's see:
- Life insurance company success depends on earning long term stakeholder trust.
- Life insurance companies are risk averse, affecting speed of change.
- Innovation is rarely a top brand attribute of insurance companies.
- The value proposition is safety, security, preparation for "when, not if" life-changing events occur.
Hmm… seems similar to me.
During the roundtable session in Tampa, I listened as "automation" quietly morphed into "replacement." Not by intent, but by an unconscious reflex. When leaders use these words interchangeably, employees and other stakeholders understandably become fearful. (I might be so bold as to suggest that leaders themselves are fearful.)
No one fully understands the implications of AI. We only know it is inevitable and coming on strong. As businesses and individuals experiment with it, the sensation is sort of like the first time you step on the accelerator of an electric car: Exhilarating and scary at the same time.
Maybe we can all agree on this as a foundation for stories we tell our boards, employees and consumers about AI thinking:
- Automation suggests support, efficiency, and augmentation.
- Replacement suggests erasure, insecurity, and disposability.
This isn't semantic nitpicking. Words shape belief. Belief shapes behavior.
Employees are also consumers. What we communicate internally about AI will influence how they talk about our industry and companies, trust our brands, and explain our value to customers. Just as funeral professionals taught consumers to fear cremation, we risk teaching our workforce, and the market, to fear AI.
Why This Matters Now
Thirty years after my arrival on the funeral scene, vestiges of "cremation versus burial" lingers. It has become an irrefutable part of the industry's evolution and the negative perception the visible hand-wringing created remains a difficult brand attribute to shake.
As AI continues to emerge as an acceptable and viable part of people's lives, we must frame it as the positive game changer it can be. Using language that threatens replacement of people or processes, we invite resistance, disengagement, and anxiety. If we frame it as something that automates tasks so people can focus on judgment, empathy, and relationships, we build confidence and alignment.
Technology doesn't drive culture. Language does. Funeral providers and insurance and financial services professionals work with and prepare people for significant and emotional waypoints. Consumer trust is not optional. The way we talk about our tools will determine whether we earn, strengthen or weaken that trust.
Where Language Meets Reality: AI by Function
The risk of careless language becomes clearer when we look at how AI can or will be applied across insurance enterprises.
Claims: When we say AI will "replace adjusters," we frame technology as a threat to judgment. In reality, AI can help automate intake, classification, and identify/mitigate fraud, allowing claims professionals to spend more time on complex issues, empathetic conversations, and fair resolution. When employees hear replacement, they protect turf. When they hear automation, they improve outcomes.
Underwriting: AI does not eliminate underwriters; it can help eliminate friction. Automated data ingestion, evidence ordering, and rule-based decisioning accelerate simple cases so underwriters can focus on nuanced risk, exceptions, and portfolio strategy. Calling this "replacement" distorts the role and diminishes human expertise that still matters.
Service and Operations: Chatbots, document summarization, and workflow automation are often described as reducing headcount. A better-and more accurate-description is that they help reduce waiting times, rework, and burnout. Language that emphasizes replacement invites fear; language that emphasizes "support" drives adoption and improves service consistency.
Distribution: AI cannot replace advisors. It can enhance preparation, personalization, and follow-through, from lead prioritization to meeting summaries and next-best-action guidance. Advisors who believe AI is meant to replace them will resist it. Advisors who understand it as an amplifier will outperform.
Another real-world example from the funeral world is when we launched an online planning and funding platform that experienced a 70% abandoned-cart rate. People went all the way through the process of choosing their funeral and memorial services and merchandise, even completing the insurance application before stopping.
When an agent contacted the individual, there was a nearly 70% close rate! Turns out the individual was simply not confident they "did things right" and wanted to talk to someone to be sure. Unlike other purchases that migrate from bricks-and-mortar, funeral planning is unfamiliar to most consumers. If we're lucky, we only do it a couple of times. Life insurance and annuities are similarly complex, and even if the purchasing process is made simpler, the number of options and situations are many.
Across every function, the pattern is the same: Tasks can be automated. Judgment, relationships, and trust are human qualities that cannot be replaced. Yet, if leaders default to language that suggests otherwise, we risk recreating the funeral industry's mistake: teaching the market to misunderstand, or worse, underestimate the value our products and services provide.
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Takeaways
- Words create reality. Be deliberate about how AI is discussed internally and externally.
- Stop conflating automation with replacement. They are not the same and treating them as such creates unnecessary fear.
- Industry jargon leaks downstream. What leaders say in conference rooms shows in employee attitudes and consumer perception.
- People remain the value. AI can scale efficiency, but it cannot replace judgment, empathy, or accountability.
- Act now. The language we normalize today will shape how AI is adopted -and resisted-tomorrow.
Let's learn from industries that unintentionally wrote their own disruption story. This time, we can choose better words - and better outcomes.
Dean Lambert, Executive Director, LIC
(475) 372-5298 (mobile)
dlambert@limra.com
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