For more than four decades, OpenGI has been one of the backbone technology providers in the UK insurance market.
With products spanning brokers, MGAs, and insurers, and more than 18,000 users across 500 businesses, the company’s mission has always been clear: help customers write more and better quality business.
At the heart of that mission is Peter Hunter, Head of R&D at OpenGI. With nearly three decades in the insurance and technology space, Peter has witnessed and shaped many of the industry’s biggest transformations. Today, he’s leading OpenGI’s efforts to ensure AI delivers real value, not just flashy headlines.
From Policy Admin to Pricing Intelligence
For brokers, OpenGI’s platforms cover the full policy administration lifecycle: transacting business, managing customers, enriching data from third-party providers, and feeding into rating platforms that enable dynamic pricing.
But for Peter, technology isn’t just about transactions. It’s about efficiency, enrichment, and enablement. By capturing better data and leveraging automation, OpenGI helps brokers and insurers make smarter decisions and deliver better outcomes to customers.
The AI Shift: Expectation vs. Reality
Peter is quick to acknowledge the impact of generative AI on customer expectations.
“Our customers expect us, as their technology partner, to bring AI solutions that deliver value. But it’s not enough to put an AI badge on the website – it has to solve real problems.”
The challenge, he explains, is balancing the pace of AI innovation with the reality of
implementation. Demos may impress, but the real test is whether AI creates measurable productivity gains, cost savings, or customer improvements.
Where AI Is Delivering Value Today
Peter sees AI adoption clustering around two main areas:
Boosting Productivity & Onboarding
- AI co-pilots can help new hires ramp up faster by providing instant access to knowledge
that previously took months to acquire. - By removing repetitive, low value tasks, AI frees teams to focus on complex work and
meaningful customer conversations.
Supporting Scheme and Pricing Development
- AI can assist insurers and MGAs in writing schemes more quickly and cleanly, setting
standards for code quality, and explaining logic for onboarding new team members. - Knowledge management is critical in insurance – AI’s ability to condense vast amounts of information into consumable insights is a game changer.
Internally, OpenGI is also using AI to surface decades of accumulated knowledge, democratizing access across departments from engineering to HR. Hackathon-style “Innovation Days” have proved especially powerful, mixing teams from across the business to co-create prototypes and explore AI’s potential.
Guardrails and Governance
For all its promise, Peter is clear-eyed about AI’s risks.
Tools like GitHub Copilot can accelerate engineering productivity, but without oversight, they risk producing code without context or quality. For him, AI is best used as a companion to experienced staff, not a replacement.
“It’s not about removing people, it’s about augmenting them. AI is another tool in the toolbox, but you still need human oversight and expertise.”
Practical Advice for Insurers Exploring AI
Peter distils his approach into a few practical takeaways for brokers, MGAs, TPAs, and insurers:
- Start with a problem, not the technology. Don’t adopt AI for the sake of it – focus on real business pain points.
- Experiment, use tools like Copilot Studio to create prototypes and test ideas in small, safe ways.
- Focus on data. Clean, structured data is the foundation for any successful AI application.
- Seek expertise. Work with partners who understand AI’s nuances and have already built the necessary guardrails.
- Augment, don’t replace. Use AI to free people for higher value tasks, not to cut corners.
- Share knowledge. Avoid silos – share lessons across teams to accelerate collective learning.
Looking Ahead
For Peter Hunter, the future of AI in insurance isn’t about hype – it’s about measurable progress.
By embedding AI into both customer-facing products and internal processes, OpenGI aims to help the industry do more with the same resources, improve the quality of business written, and empower teams to focus on what matters most.
“AI isn’t the answer in itself. But used in the right way, with the right data and guardrails, it can transform how our industry works.”
