Applied Net 2026 recap: One connected current of insurance, limitless possibilities

Another Applied Net® is in the books, and it is safe to say it was one of the best. More than 4,000 people from agencies, brokerages, carriers, MGAs and technology companies joined us in Washington, D.C.

We welcomed Chief Product Officer Lance Williams and watched Taylor Rhodes pass the Applied Systems CEO baton to Graham Blackwell. Danielle Cunningham, vice president of solution consulting, reflected on how far insurance technology has come and where AI is taking us next. And Applied Client Network (ACN) CEO Brian Langerman shared ACN's mission and the strength of our partnership. Across more than 250 education sessions, expo demos and hundreds of one-on-one conversations, we showed how we're bringing our vision for the future of insurance to life

Here's a closer look at what we covered, what it means for your daily work, and where we're still building.

Building on 43 years of history

For more than four decades, we've watched the entire insurance industry adapt as the tools of insurance changed around it. In 1981, IBM brought the first personal computer to market. At the time, few people could have imagined how profoundly the computer would change the world and how people would work. But it opened the door to incredible innovation, including an idea from an insurance agent named Bob Eustace.

Bob loved technology, believed insurance mattered, and knew there was a better way for insurance to work. In 1983, Bob and a few friends bet everything on a machine that much of the world had never seen. They founded Applied Systems and set out to become the insurance industry's partner in the PC era. Together, they built the first PC-based agency management system.

Bob and his friends believed the PC would pave a better way to work in insurance.

They took the time to work with customers, get them set up and make sure it worked for them. The same is true of AI today. We are in its early innings, and we plan to embrace the defining technology of our time just as Applied's founders embraced the PC decades ago. We will help you use AI to change how insurance operates for the better. And we're here to work alongside you to make it work best so that you can have time back for your clients.

Meeting customers where they are is a part of who we are at Applied, and it shows in our 40-year partnership with ACN. A simple idea to bring Applied customers together to challenge, support and learn from one another has grown into the thriving community it is today. It remains one of the most important ways that we listen, learn, and stay close to what our customers need.

Adding AI to the insurance toolkit

We heard from some of our keynote speakers about the early days of completing administrative tasks, complete with floppy discs, paper files, and printers. The tools may have changed, but the heart of the work hasn't. Insurance has always been about protecting what matters to clients and being there for them when they need you most.

Vertical AI is the newest addition to your toolkit. Insurance professionals deserve the ability to act on information the moment it arrives, without extra manual effort. That means connecting the work across every stage of the workflow so that work keeps moving. This is where Applied steps in. Graham emphasized in his keynote that we have the bold ambition and promise to be your AI transformation partner.

The launch of Epic Conductor™ showed what that ambition looks like in practice. Built natively into Applied Epic®, the embedded platform brings AI into the system your team already uses across your everyday workflows.

Epic Conductor carries that idea across three key areas: operational automation, financial automation, and connected trading.

• Operational automation: Information from across the policy lifecycle, from issuance through claims, becomes easier to find and act on. The right context and documents move with the work, so automated workflows can keep it moving.

• Financial automation: Financial work follows a single, connected process built on the same policy records your agency already uses, from the carrier document that initiates the transaction through collection and reconciliation.

• Connected trading: Your agency gets a single view of the market, including commercial new business and remarket submissions. Your agency also gets a clearer path to placing more business with the carriers you want to grow with, without rebuilding the data Epic already holds.

Graham framed the policy lifecycle as an assembly line, with hundreds of steps and handoffs that nobody works in perfect sequence. Let's follow one operational automation use case from his keynote. An account manager that he calls Evelyn looks after 1,800 customers. On a normal Tuesday, one of them sends a few policy questions. To answer, she opens Applied Epic and works through the locate screen, trying to recall the codes and combinations that find the account. Then she hopes the policy arrives through carrier download. When it did not, she opened the policy, confirmed it was the final version and scrolled through dozens of pages to piece together an answer.

Graham showed a different Tuesday. Evelyn types her question, and the search looks inside documents as well as the fields someone remembered to fill in. When a policy is not available for download, she uploads it from an email or a carrier portal, and AI pulls the details into Applied Epic that a download would have provided. Policy checking and quote comparison confirm that the coverage matches what the client requested. The hours she spent retyping and scrolling go back to the customers she became an account manager to serve.

Much of the day gets lost in everything that happens between tasks across operational automation, financial automation, and connected trading. That's where Epic Conductor gets to work.

Fewer handoffs, smoother flow

I keep coming back to a line from Graham's keynote: "Anybody can build a feature." Agency leaders see this every day. There's one tool for policy checking, another for quote comparison, and another for reconciliation. Each works well on its own until the work reaches the next step. That breaks up the assembly line and creates real friction. But if you have all the workflows – all the data – operating in a single place, agents can go from managing manual handoffs to conducting the assembly line themselves.

We aren't going to pretend we'll get everything right on day one or deliver every solution on your ideal timeline. That's why we'll continue to give you the flexibility to integrate with other vendors. And we'll treat those choices as valuable feedback on where we can do better and what we need to solve next.

Connecting work across insurance

What comes next reaches beyond Applied Epic. Some of the hardest handoffs sit between an agency and a carrier, and no one product removes them. Agency management systems such as Applied Epic and EZLynx® support agencies across the market. Applied's carrier connectivity from Ivans® connects those agencies with more than 700 carriers and MGAs. Our risk digitization platform, Cytora, turns trading partner risk information into data that brokers, carriers and reinsurers can put to work. With all these capabilities at your fingertips, you keep submissions moving, statements reconciling, and risk data ready for a decision. Each step hands clean data to the next. That is the connected current in practice.

Ivans and Cytora are coming more fully into the Applied story, and you could feel that shared energy in D.C. There are more opportunities to solve the handoffs that slow our industry down for both agencies and carriers.

Recognizing industry greatness

Beyond the new innovation, we also recognized the great work of our industry and other organizations.

We celebrated 18 carriers and MGAs with a Spark Award for strengthening digital connectivity with their independent agency partners across the policy lifecycle. As Michael Streit, president of Applied Carrier, shared, connected insurtech investments create value at every step, from submissions and underwriting to distribution.

The Pinnacle Awards are another honor that shows what connected work looks like in action. We presented five awards to agencies, brokerages and carriers using Applied's platforms to make a meaningful difference.

In addition to these awards, we invested time in developing future industry leaders. Through a partnership with Invest, a nonprofit organization that collaborates with schools to educate students on insurance, Applied Net hosted nearly 100 high school students in the D.C. area. The experience also gave them a firsthand look at the energy, opportunities and community that make this industry special.

We also took time to give back to the community. One of the highlights of the event was seeing our community come together to give back through a partnership with World Vision. Employees, clients and partners packed 500 backpacks with school supplies in just over three hours. Those backpacks will soon make their way to students at a Chicagoland school, helping them begin the academic year with the tools they need. World Vision is our 2026 Charity of Choice, and the giving continues with our partnership to bring clean water to children in Honduras.

Insurance runs on people

You are the heroes of this story. You understand the client and the risk. You make the call. Our job is to build the current underneath that connects the work. We know that earning your trust takes proof. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and we're glad you hold us to it.

We hope you feel encouraged about what is ahead. Bob and his friends set up every system and made sure it worked right for each customer. We plan to do the same with AI, right alongside you. See how Epic Conductor is bringing this vision to life.