In this episode of the Power Producers Podcast, host David Carothers welcomes back Colby Tunick from ReFocus AI. Colby dives deep into the company’s latest innovation that’s transforming the way insurance agencies service policies. Refocus AI, which started with helping agencies predict customer churn, has now transitioned to automating one of the most time-consuming aspects of insurance — quoting policies. Colby shares how their new technology is helping agencies scale efficiently without burning out staff, allowing producers to focus on building relationships and growing their book of business.
Refocus AI began by addressing the issue of time spent servicing existing policies. Colby discusses how insurance agencies spend a significant portion of their time on renewals, quoting, and policy servicing, which takes away from their ability to acquire new business.
Refocus AI’s new tool, IntelliAgent, acts as a virtual assistant that automates the quoting process. This AI-powered system logs into carrier portals, retrieves rates, and delivers bindable quotes, freeing up agents’ time to focus on client relationships.
Colby explains how automating the quoting process can help agencies scale without adding significant headcount. It allows agencies to quote on multiple lines with various carriers simultaneously, drastically reducing the time spent on manual quoting tasks.
For small commercial and personal lines business, agencies often struggle with quoting efficiency. Colby shares how technology like IntelliAgent is solving this problem, making it easier for agencies to serve more clients without overwhelming their teams.
Refocus AI’s roadmap includes plans to expand into the ENS market, where underwriters are involved. By automating this process, Refocus AI will further streamline how agencies access bindable rates and service their clients, all while maintaining a high level of accuracy.
Colby shares the personal story of how working excessive hours led to burnout and a serious health condition. This experience fuels Refocus AI’s mission to help agencies reduce unnecessary workload and increase staff retention by allowing employees to focus on high-value tasks.
Colby gives a sneak peek into two new innovations coming soon. The Know Your Customer module will make updating account information faster and more efficient, while the MGA Marketplace will help agencies quickly find coverage for policy exclusions and better options for motor sports, flood, earthquake, and more.
The commercial insurance world isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s unpredictable, chaotic, and constantly demanding producers to manage competing pressures—client needs, renewal deadlines, life events, prospecting goals, and agency responsibilities. And if you’re a middle-market producer, multiply that by ten.
In the middle market commercial insurance space, the role of the producer has never been more critical—or more misunderstood. Too many producers still view their job as selling policies instead of what it truly is: protecting the assets and livelihoods of the businesses they serve.
The middle market rewards depth, not breadth. Yet many producers still approach it like a volume game, quoting everything that moves, chasing price, and hoping activity turns into production. From the outside, it looks like hustle. From the inside of the underwriting and wholesale world, it looks like noise.
Personal lines has quietly become one of the most competitive segments in the insurance industry. Agencies that once dominated their local markets are now fighting to differentiate themselves against direct writers, digital-first carriers, and large brokers with massive content machines.
The cyber insurance market has always been unpredictable. Over the past decade, we’ve seen it move from an emerging line of coverage to one of the most volatile, swinging rapidly between soft and hard market cycles. But today, cyber has entered one of the softest markets in recent memory—and that presents a rare opportunity for both agents and clients.
For most of my 20-year career, captives felt like something reserved for the insurance elite—the jumbo accounts, the Fortune-level operations, the companies with multimillion-dollar manual premiums and entire departments dedicated to risk management. If you had asked me ten or fifteen years ago whether a $250,000 account was a legitimate captive candidate, I would’ve laughed. I thought captives were reserved for companies so complex and so large that the only rational way to insure them was to build an insurance company around their risk.
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