The Pressure Facing the Insurance Industry
The insurance industry is anything but uniform. Carriers, brokers, intermediaries, and retail agent groups each operate differently, but all face the same headwinds: rising costs, tightening regulations, and increasing risk.
Having spent years in conversation with CFOs, controllers, and finance leaders across industries, I see a familiar pattern in insurance: legacy tools and manual processes that slow down decision-making, increase compliance risk, and leave valuable insights on the table.
The reality is stark: insured losses from natural catastrophes topped $100 billion for the fourth consecutive year in 2023. Raising premiums or narrowing coverage may provide short-term relief, but they don’t address the operational inefficiencies that keep finance teams reactive instead of proactive.
This is why I believe the time for transformation is now.
Why AI Belongs in Insurance Finance
Manual and fragmented workflows simply aren’t built for today’s pace. When expense reports and AP processes depend on outdated systems, they become bottlenecks. Or worse, blind spots.
AI is changing that equation. Intelligent automation doesn’t just speed up routine tasks—it highlights risks before they become losses, embeds compliance at every step, and turns data into proactive decision-making power. In other words, it helps finance evolve from a back-office function to a growth driver.
At Emburse, we’ve been recognized by IDC as a leader in enterprise expense management and AP automation and received the IDC SaaS CSAT Award for Customer Satisfaction in Travel & Expense. This recognition reflects something I care deeply about: delivering measurable outcomes that help finance teams spend smarter and respond faster.
Meeting the Needs of Every Segment
Insurance isn’t one-size-fits-all. Carriers, brokers, intermediaries, and retail agent groups each face distinct challenges—but all can benefit from smarter, AI-powered spend management. Here’s how:
Carriers
The challenge
Large carriers juggle thousands of transactions across legal entities and regions. Outdated systems weren’t built for this scale.
The solution
Enterprise-grade automation. AI-powered audits. Real-time visibility. These give carriers the control they need without slowing them down. Intelligent fraud detection and policy enforcement help protect margins while scaling across complex structures.
Brokers
The challenge
Brokers live on the move, but clunky expense systems create delays and distractions.
The solution
Emburse simplifies expense management with a mobile-first experience, AI-powered categorization, and fast, automated approval flows. Brokers can capture receipts on the go and get reimbursed faster—freeing up valuable time for the client relationships that matter most.
Intermediaries
The challenge
Intermediaries sit at the crossroads of multiple teams, partners, and business units with layered commission models, cross-functional spend, and frequent reconciliation needs. Visibility and accuracy are constant challenges.
The solution
Emburse integrates seamlessly with existing financial systems to unify data across entities, automate reconciliation, and surface real-time insights into partner spend. Built-in AI analytics provide clarity and control over complex spend flows without adding friction to day-to-day operations.
Retail Agent Groups
The challenge
Retail agent networks thrive on independence, but that autonomy can make it hard to enforce firm-wide policies or maintain consistent spending tracking. Without the right tools, finance teams struggle to generate accurate reports across decentralized global teams.
The solution
Emburse delivers an intuitive, mobile-first expense experience that agents will actually use while giving headquarters the centralized oversight they need. Configurable policies, real-time reporting, and intuitive workflows balance autonomy and accountability, driving adoption and improving compliance across the network. The platform also supports intelligent categorization and recognition of global currency and date nuances, reducing manual effort, coding errors, and reconciliation time across distributed teams.
What Success Looks Like
Insurance organizations worldwide already trust Emburse to simplify complexity and deliver measurable results. For example:
- Allianz Partners reduced expense report processing time by 90%
- Pharmacists Mutual modernized its T&E processes to give its finance team clarity and speed
- Elevance Health drove compliance and savings through a mobile-first strategy that unified Expense, Travel Reshop, and Travel Audit
And they’re not alone. Leaders like FM Global, The Cincinnati Insurance Company, W. R. Berkley Corporation, Leavitt Group, Northwestern Mutual, the Blue Cross & Blue Shield Association, Allstate, and many others rely on Emburse. They trust us because our solutions save our customers millions of dollars each year across hotels, air, and audits, while maintaining the compliance and visibility the industry demands.
Allstate and Allianz, for example, both benefit from our Travel and Reshop capabilities, which capture savings automatically in the background.
The Results Extend Beyond Efficiency
When insurers modernize T&E and AP with Emburse, the results speak volumes. Many of our clients have reported:
- Overall savings potential: Business travelers can save up to 20% on hotels by leveraging Emburse’s benchmarking of travel policies and supplier contracts
- 90% reduction in invoice processing time
- 67% faster reimbursements
- 50% less time spent on manual audits
- Thousands of hours saved annually through automation of routine tasks
- Up to 20% reduction in wasteful spend
- Millions saved annually through stronger spend control
- Our business travel snapshot data also shows negotiated hotel and air rates are delivering double-digit savings in 2025, with hotel discounts averaging 21% and airfare discounts reaching nearly 17%
These partnerships demonstrate that when insurers modernize their finance workflows with Emburse, the results extend beyond efficiency—they drive confidence and a competitive advantage.
A Path Forward
Insurance finance teams are being asked to deliver more agility, more compliance, and more insight—without more time or resources. That’s a tall order. But with the right platform, it’s achievable.
At Emburse, we’ve built AI-powered tools that don’t just digitize yesterday’s processes—they anticipate what’s needed tomorrow. Whether you’re a global carrier or a regional agency, our goal is the same: free up resources so finance can focus on strategy, not paperwork.
If your organization is ready to move beyond fragmented systems and reactive processes, I invite you to see how Emburse can help.
Request a personalized demo and explore what smarter spend management can mean for insurance finance.