Sales Column | How to help your clients relate to their insurance policies

Before using a company’s services, it’s likely you will read their online reviews. Your clients do the same. Online reviews strongly influence buying decisions, and some studies find negative reviews can dissuade up to 67% of consumers from making a purchase.

Tech company Upfirst analyzed 5,000 negative customer reviews and reported that nearly 40% are caused by poor communication. In our industry, that number is probably even higher.

Insurance is complex and many consumers don’t fully understand its nuances. It’s easy to see why. Policies are filled with technical language and industry jargon that can be confusing and overwhelming. Reading them doesn’t draw people in.

Imagine teaching your clients about coverages in a way that’s simple to understand, holds their attention, and actually interests them. That would probably make policy details clearer, create better experiences, and lead to more online recommendations for your brand, right?

New learning tools

Last September, Google launched Learn Your Way, a tool using AI to personalize textbooks. It aims to make educational content more relatable to all learners based on their grade-level reading comprehension and personal interests. For instance, you can teach physics by relating it to sports. Or you can teach biology through cooking, or even history using gaming.

One-size-fits-all solutions often leave people behind, especially in education. To make learning easier, Learn Your Way delivers content in different formats so users can engage with the material in whichever way works best for them.

Although the tech is still very new, early testing shows students using Learn Your Way score 11% higher on exams than those using a standard digital reader. As the technology evolves, its application will go well beyond textbooks.

One of our biggest challenges as insurance brokers is explaining the nuances of different protections, how they respond to losses, and why it’s crucial to purchase the right limits – not just the cheapest coverage.

AI platforms can help your brokerage do this more efficiently, creating economic benefits while freeing teams up to assist more clients. No more guessing which ‘Jedi mind trick’ might convince people to increase optional accident benefits or that their small businesses face greater cyber risk than they realize. Those efforts can instead be replaced with personalized educational tools, helping brokers teach clients using language and examples that instantly resonate.

The future is now

I’m already having discussions across our brokerage about how we can prepare for opportunities like this, even if the technologies aren’t available for commercial sale yet. How can we better structure our data, segment our clients, identify gaps, and build frameworks to start testing these tools when they arrive?

Brokerage innovation doesn’t happen by chance. It needs to be mapped out and prioritized. Block weekly time in your calendar to learn about AI, research emerging opportunities, and develop strategies to make your business and brand stand out.

Finding new ways to make insurance more accessible and engaging creates experiences that inspire trust, loyalty and positive reviews, driving your business forward.

Adam Mitchell is CEO of Mitch Insurance, a Whitby, Ont.-based insurance brokerage. This article is excerpted from one that appeared in the December 2025-January 2026 print edition of Canadian Underwriter.