Your Agency Has an AI Exposure. It's Not in Any Contract

Every independent agency is using AI. Every agency has contracts with vendors, with carriers, with technology providers. Almost none of those contracts account for what the AI is actually doing. That is the gap this episode exists to name. Cal Durland, Executive Director of AUGIE (the Associations & User Groups Information Exchange) and holder of the CPCU, and Donna LaGoy, Chief Enterprise Platforms Officer at Highstreet Insurance Partners, sit down to talk about what AI means for independent agencies. Not the product demos. The exposures nobody put in a contract yet. Donna is the one who walks through the concrete risks. Her first warning: the agency that buys a consumer ChatGPT account, drops two client declarations pages into it, and asks it to compare coverage. Her words: "You're exposing your client's data out in the deep, dark web." The fix: buy at enterprise level so data stays inside your environment. Her second warning - and the one nobody thinks about - involves the carrier portal. If an AI agent acts on your behalf in a carrier system, does the carrier know? Is it contractually permitted? Her follow-up is the part that lands: "What's gonna happen to your appointment with that carrier if you violated and you didn't realize it?" She maps the build-versus-buy decision without picking a side: weigh budget, time, and how fast the technology is moving. Build and it may be obsolete next month. Buy and it costs more but someone else keeps it current. Vet several vendors. Take the free demo. Get referrals. Cal puts the fear in context. The industry heard the same warnings with download and with real-time. Her line: "We have a proven history of that." AUGIE - which anyone in the industry can join at augiegroup.org - is producing a checklist out of conversations like this one. For agents who are serious about protecting their clients AND their own E&O from AI exposure: visit AIBriefingRoom.com