“Let me start by saying I’m a guy who has been skeptical of technology revolutions in the past,” says General Manager of Tinubu Surety, Yaron Ben-Zvi. As someone who was at the leading edge of the life insurance technology revolution, he has seen technologies come, go, and fizzle out, but when it comes to AI, “I actually think we’re just in the early innings,” he says. “The potential is massive for all of insurance, but particularly for Surety, because the workflows are so complex. It’ll take Surety tech stack evolution, and there are questions of data privacy and security to be addressed. Still, there is so much room for greater efficiency in Surety that AI will be incredibly valuable to address.”
In this Q&A with Yaron, he shares where AI will first make its presence felt in Surety, whether its increasing importance affects how organizations should allocate IT budgets, and the non-technical challenges of adopting new technology.
Tinubu recently commissioned a Surety technology and operations survey, what did it uncover about AI usage and readiness for new technology?
Yaron: The Surety Outlook 2025: Tech and Ops Benchmarks survey showed that while carriers are slightly ahead of brokers in experimenting with AI, overall adoption in Surety remains at a very early stage. None of the firms surveyed have scaled AI deployments yet — most are still testing task-specific use cases. In fact, 44% of brokers and 27% of carriers reported no use of AI at all, and another 28% of brokers and 27% of carriers said they’re only in pilot mode.
Before AI can truly take hold in Surety, the infrastructure challenge has to be solved. Some firms invest less than 3% of GWP in technology, while others are allocating up to 15%. Much of that spend still goes toward maintaining legacy systems rather than true modernization. To unlock AI’s potential, the focus needs to shift from patching old infrastructure to building integrated, scalable systems that can support automation and analytics.
That’s where specialized technology partners come in. Carriers and brokers should be focused on market differentiation, sales, and client service — not rebuilding software from the ground up. By collaborating with industry-focused platforms like Tinubu, firms can modernize faster, streamline workflows, and create the foundation for meaningful AI adoption.
What are the areas in Surety where AI will initially make an impact?
Yaron: The first thing AI will help with is data and document ingestion. At the moment in Surety, a variety of documents and data need to be imported into a carrier’s system manually, making workflows very fragmented. In the research, brokers and carriers both listed integration with agency or enterprise IT infrastructure as the biggest challenge to modernization.
AI solves this problem in the sense that it doesn’t force you down a single path, and it doesn't oblige brokers to work in a particular way to make things easier for carriers. Regardless of the document or data type, AI will be able to ingest it and convert it into a coherent, structured data object for use in a carrier’s system. So AI can deal with the fact that there are many different paths, and save carriers from manually inputting data and documents.
What will be the first uses of this technology?
Yaron: At Tinubu we’re developing a product that will automatically ingest new bonds, which currently have to be entered manually. Another workflow challenge we’re tackling where I see a big role for AI is “Work in Progress” reports, because every contractor is going to have different books:
- Some big firms have really clean, structured financials
- Some of the smaller ones will be handwritten
- Some are in between and have their own way of defining things
AI will improve this process and provide a large amount of operational leverage for underwriters as they assess risks and understand what’s actually happening.
Where else do you see AI being useful?
Yaron: Claims is a very document-heavy area of Surety, which includes a lot of legal and recovery documents. AI will be able to provide summaries of documents and key steps, and provide insight and guidance.
Claim review requires a lot of bespoke knowledge; people who understand building, contracting and legal matters, and each claim is different. So I don’t think you’re ever going to replace people in that process. However, AI can provide efficiencies via summaries of long documents, suggested areas to focus on, and indications of possible outcomes based on relevant historical claims. We’re working on a tool to address all of that, and we think it will add a lot of value.
How will this new technology affect underwriters?
Yaron: Even with data ingestion, there will always be a human in the loop. Today a carrier receives a PDF, and someone on their team prints it out, and manually keys it into one of several different systems. Technology can take that from being an hour-long process to one that’s five minutes. Where an underwriter will be important is at the end, when they can review the result, flagging areas for follow up and using other data sources as needed. Then they will have more time to analyze and work with the data instead of entering it.
The use of AI in underwriting will be similar to its use for claims. It won’t be replacing people, but it will enable them to work more efficiently by summarizing documents and making suggestions. For larger contract bonds where the underwriting is very complex, AI could aggregate and summarize documents, credit, financial and business histories, and provide insights and suggestions based on historical data. I think it can be extremely valuable in letting underwriters quickly answer questions rather than having to look them scour multiple documents or areas of their system.
Also, one thing that’s different about Surety compared to other kinds of insurance is that you underwrite to zero claims. So the level of certainty required around decisions is extremely high. You want a nuanced human understanding and review of some of these high-value cases. There’s a strong, relationship-based dynamic between underwriters and agents, and so much undefinable knowledge — AI cannot replace that, but it can help everyone work smarter.
What are the challenges relating to AI in Surety?
Yaron: The challenge is less about the tech and more about people and their ways of working. AI needs to be introduced in a manner that underwriters feel is useful and won’t result in important data being missed. We need to build confidence in the technology and make sure underwriters understand that we’re not trying to replace them. That’s one of the reasons I think AI will be used for underwriting last.
One hurdle is having underwriters change, not so much their mindset, but their practice in terms of how they get close to the numbers. If you speak to some underwriters today who have to manually enter data line by line, they’ll say that’s an important part of their process of getting familiar with the information. But is that really the most efficient way to get close to the numbers and understand the risks? That’s part of the journey that has to be undertaken, which is not just a technology journey, but a practice journey. Ideally technology will make it easier for underwriters to focus on risk questions, and take away the manual tasks that we have 100% confidence we can automate accurately.
Does the increased role of AI in Surety have implications for how Surety businesses should allocate their technology budgets?
Yaron: I think that in general it means a Surety business should have a technology partner (like Tinubu) that is uncovering and building ways to use AI for faster, more efficient workflows, and doing so in consultation with its customers. Carriers and brokers should also be using technology to do business efficiently today—for example, the survey showed that less than 20% of small commercial bonds are issued without human intervention, even though those can be auto-issued now.
The CEO of Travelers, Alan Schnitzer, recently said on an earnings call that his company is “very bullish on AI,” and that it spends over $1.5 billion on technology each year, with a lot of that devoted to AI. He referred to Surety as “an environment where technology and AI will continue to segment the marketplace” and I think that was well put. AI will definitely play a bigger role in Surety; it will make workflows more efficient for those who use it, and enable them to do more business. Fundamentally, that’s a competitive advantage that you will want to have.
