How Tate Insurance Group Made AI Adoption Mandatory

Independent agencies have spent the last few years building out the AI side of their tech stacks, investing in quoting tools, prospecting tools, and embedded intelligence inside the agency management system itself. The returns across the industry, though, remain uneven: some agencies are turning their new tools into measurable outcomes, while others are watching expensive subscriptions go underused.

The pattern that explains the gap is starting to come into focus, and it has less to do with the tools themselves than with how agencies handle adoption. Some agency leaders treat new AI capabilities as additions to the menu, available to the team when needed and optional when it isn't. Others treat the same capabilities as part of the operating system: required, tracked, and built into the everyday workflow. The agencies in the second group are the ones turning AI subscriptions into measurable business outcomes.

One agency that has taken the second approach is Tate Insurance Group, a generalist independent agency based in Knoxville, Tennessee. About 65 percent of Tate's book is commercial, and the commercial team is mostly new. A period of rapid growth over the last few years have left most of the agency's account managers with under a year on the job. Behind the new staff, the agency was carrying a deeper challenge: a backlog of legacy accounts that had been quietly auto-renewing for years with no real review. No one was sure what coverage had been offered, declined, or simply inherited.

Faith Pezzulo, Tate's Commercial Lines Department Manager, decided the agency needed a different operating model. She made Applied Book Builder a requirement across every commercial account.

"Applied Book Builder isn't optional for my team. I track utilization heavily."

Faith Pezzulo, Commercial Lines Department Manager, Tate Insurance Group

Faith built Applied Book Builder into Tate's existing 90-day renewal workflow within Applied Epic®. Every commercial account triggers a Renewal Review Dash activity at the 90-day mark. Account managers are required to review the Applied Book Builder profile within two weeks, then schedule a one-hour meeting with each producer to walk through the accounts. Producers and account managers document what's offered, what's declined, and what gets remarketed. Every time, in writing. The same workflow applies to new business: when an inbound prospect comes in with only deck pages, the team runs an Applied Book Builder prospect profile before quoting, so the producer goes back with the full picture instead of a partial one.

The shift in how the team shows up to client conversations was immediate. Walking into a renewal meeting with a structured rationale, like "here's what you have, here's what you need, here's why," is something newer commercial staff usually don't get to do until they've put in a few years. With Applied Book Builder doing the upfront analysis, Tate's mostly-new account managers can have those conversations on day one.

"We come to meetings prepared, saying, "Here's what you have, here's what you need, and here's why." We look a lot more professional than we used to."

Faith Pezzulo

The numbers followed. Account managers no longer spend 30 to 60 minutes hunting for ancillary information like protection class codes, fire department locations, VINs, and year built before they can sit down to quote. That data is in the Applied Book Builder report. Tate has also written approximately $350,000 in out-of-state commercial business, accounts in Ohio and Virginia they couldn't have visited quickly under the old workflow. Producers no longer have to drive to multiple sites to measure properties; the Applied Book Builder report carries that work.

"We're definitely quoting a lot more business than we typically do. It's been that way since we adopted Applied Book Builder."

Faith Pezzulo

The broader lesson

What separates Tate's approach from a more typical AI rollout isn't the tool. It's the operating decision behind it. By making Applied Book Builder mandatory and building it into the existing renewal workflow, Faith didn't add another optional task to her team's plate. She replaced the way commercial work was already getting done with a faster, more thorough version of itself.

That distinction matters for any agency considering or already running AI capabilities in its stack. The question isn't whether the technology can deliver returns. It's whether the agency's operating model is built to require its use. Tools sitting in the background, available to anyone who remembers to open them, produce uneven results. Tools built into the workflow, where they are required, tracked, and reviewed, are the ones that translate into the business metrics agency leaders are measured on.

The agencies turning AI investments into real returns aren't necessarily the ones with the longest tool stack. They're the ones who've decided that some of those tools aren't optional anymore.

Read more about Tate Insurance Group's story.