Views of our CXO - Consumers Are Ready for Conversation-Led Insurance, Are You?

This article is written by Rob Rushton, CXO at PeppercornAI. In it, he shares his perspective on the future of digital insurance experiences and how conversational first AI agents are delivering real benefits for both customers and insurers from better understanding and engagement to smarter risk management and operational efficiency.

Views of Rob Rushton, Chief Experience Officer, Product Owner and Ai Experience Designer.

ChatGPT.com is now the 5th most visited website in the world and it’s not slowing down. With a 36% jump in users from Q4 2023 to Q4 2024, it’s also been named the fastest-growing app in computing history.

So what?

This isn’t just a tech trend. It’s a shift in how people want to interact, fast, smart, and through conversation. The rise of the use of tools like ChatGPT is no longer limited to tech enthusiasts. These tools are now being picked up by the general population. New digital experiences powered by AI are appearing almost daily, transforming the old into what’s now branded as “intelligent” or “smart” chat features.

This explosion is driving familiarity and shaping a new expectation. People are discovering just how valuable natural, conversation-based interactions can be. The days of “oh great, not another chatbot” are being left behind.

In the same top 10 list, Wikipedia has dropped from 4th in 2020 to 8th this year. That shift hints at something bigger: users are moving away from information-heavy, non-personalised journeys. In their place, they’re opting for chat-led, ‘conversational-first’ experiences. People want quicker, simpler, and more tailored ways of getting answers, whether that’s through visiting AI-powered sites directly or using features like Google’s new “AI overviews,” which now take the top spot in search results and often remove the need to visit any website at all.

Does this put further strain on not-for-profit Wikipedia?

It’s a side note, but worth reflecting on. There’s a strange co-dependency at play. AI tools have reportedly ingested much of Wikipedia’s 64 million articles, using them as part of the foundation for today’s intelligent experiences. But as Wikipedia’s traffic continues to fall, will the community of active editors fade with it?

If fewer people contribute, and the source stops growing, what happens to the quality of the data these AI systems have relied on previously?

What is a Conversational-First approach?

It’s about designing digital journeys where the main interaction is a conversation. Not forms. Not menus. Just a natural back-and-forth. It takes the power and flexibility of AI and wraps it in something familiar, a simple conversation.

But behind the conversation is the same structure, rules, compliance and reliability you’d expect from a well-designed digital experience. The difference is the user doesn’t have to figure out how to get through it. They just ask, answer, and move forward, like they would with your best call centre agent on the phone.

Conversational-first isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the leap. The jump from static websites to intelligent, personalised interactions. For many businesses rolling out AI-powered tools, it’s the moment everything changes.

The future of insurance is returning to conversation

We know insurance didn’t start with online forms, dropdowns, and conversion funnels. It started with conversations. Brokers building strong relationships with their clients, guiding them through options that matched both their needs and their budget. The broker’s role was to listen, understand the risk, and recommend something that made sense. It was personal. It was tailored. It was human.

Fast forward, and a lot of that got lost. The conversation turned into static journeys filled with assumptions, minimal interrupts to the flow and firmly put the pressure and responsibility on the customer to figure things out for themselves and make the decisions. Personalisation took a back seat and customer, given all the information to read, have been disengaged.

The move to online also introduced something else, the ability for some customers to misrepresent their information, whether by accident or design. With no conversation to guide the detail, it became easier to tweak answers in search of a cheaper price. We’ve been nurtured into chasing savings above all else, trained to feel good when we ‘beat the system’ at renewal. The dopamine hit comes from the discount, not the reassurance that we’ve got the right cover.

But now, we’re circling back, only this time, AI is the one leading the conversation.

Opportunities for Insurers

A conversational-first experience brings us back to how insurance started, guided, responsive, and personal. But this time, it’s powered by AI, available 24/7, and scalable.

This isn’t about long forms or passive flows. It’s structured conversation that gives the customer room to ask, clarify, and keep going without losing their place. They can stop mid-journey to check cover differences, ask about exclusions, or re-read the T&Cs, then pick up exactly where they left off. It’s a proper back-and-forth, more like a call centre interaction than a webform, just without the wait times.

That freedom to explore doesn’t compromise regulatory compliance integratory of the experience. Quite the opposite. The AI will mandate that all the regulatory information is shown to the customer, and that all the questions and statements the insurer wants answered or agreed to are completed.

You’re still getting the data you need and more, without forcing the customer down a rigid path. The flow adapts in real time, depending on what the customer says, so you’re clarifying risk and surfacing relevant products without disrupting the conversion.

It’s exactly the kind of thing the FCA has been pushing for. Real understanding. Informed choices. A journey where you can evidence that the customer had every chance to ask, re-ask, and make decisions with confidence. And unlike a ticked box or PDF link, there’s a full, auditable trail that shows how and where the information was explained.

The impact shows in the outcomes

As CX lead and product owner, I’ve been hands-on in shaping everything from journey logic to how we build regulatory controls directly into the experience in real time. Having delivered a conversational-first journey at Peppercorn over the past three years, I’ve seen the impact firsthand. Customers are engaged. They’re not scrolling past. They’re reading policy terms and key cover details because the experience holds their attention. It creates space to absorb, not just react and that makes a real difference.

And it plays out in the numbers, we saw lower post-sale cancellation rates (<1.5%), fewer complaints (<1%) about missed or misunderstood cove or terms, and a direct influence in the need to repudiate claims for misrepresentation.When people understand what they’ve bought, they’re less likely to dispute it later (more detail to follow on this in a future post).

This isn’t just compliance, it’s competitive advantage

Conversational journeys open up a whole new level of visibility. You get real-time insight into what customers care about, where they hesitate, what they’re asking for, and which benefits they’re unsure of. It’s data that form-based journeys simply don’t give you, and it’s live, not retrospective.

It also unlocks a different way of managing risk. Trained AI agents and purpose-built LLMs can ask smarter questions, spot signals, and clarify detail, without needing to pass the customer into another channel. That’s real-time risk assessment happening in the quote flow, not days later in manual review.

And then there’s the pricing challenge. Most insurers are working with the same enrichment datasets (as a generalism), leading to the similar approaches and decisions. It’s pricing convergence and it kills differentiation and competitive edge.

A conversational-first model breaks that. It generates data unique to your business, real signals that only you have access to. That opens the door to better segmentation, sharper pricing, and more informed underwriting decisions.

Operationally, it drives realised efficiency savings too. Customers understand their cover better, which means fewer follow ups and stronger self-service containment. Fewer errors. Fewer complaints. And because the experience is built around how people think, not how forms behave, it leads to better outcomes. In fact, we found from surveying Peppercorn customers that 91 % say they feel more informed compared to traditional form-based websites.

The gap is growing, which side are you on?

Conversational first journeys are reshaping insurance, not just at the front end, but across how we assess risk, price products, meet regulatory expectations, and run operations.

This isn’t just a new interface or a fresh way to collect the same data. It’s a shift in how customers and insurers interact, moving from static transactions to responsive, real time dialogue. And that change brings clear advantages: better customer understanding, less friction, more meaningful data, and journeys that naturally align with regulatory standards from the start.

This isn’t theory. It’s happening now. We didn’t just see fewer cancellations. We saw clearer disclosures, fewer service queries post-purchase, and more accurate risk profiles all from a fully conversation-led experience. They’re learning more about their customers, creating proprietary data that others can’t access, and doing it in a way that scales without sacrificing control.

Businesses acting now will define the next wave of digital insurance. Those that wait will be left fine tuning journeys that no longer meet customer expectations and inevitable go backwards.

The opportunity is here, and the gap between the early movers and the rest of the market is growing fast. Rob Rushton, Chief Experience Officer.