Relation Insurance Accelerates its AI Strategy With Vertafore

Challenge: Turning AI curiosity into practical agency transformation

Since the early days of generative AI availability, Relation Insurance has made AI innovation part of its culture.

The agency, which is active in all lines across the U.S., launched RelationGPT in January 2025, just a year and a half after ChatGPT made its large language model publicly available. RelationGPT gave the agency’s team the flexibility of ChatGPT while staying secure within Relation’s tech stack. When Relation made the tool available to its 1,400 team members, the agency was purposeful about change management, giving employees time to explore the tool and develop trust in it.

But in 2026, AI is no longer optional. And agencies don’t have as much time to convince staff to use AI tools. 

You have to have a strategy, AI tools are the only thing I’ve seen since the Internet that are that profound and that transformational.” 

_{Mike Toran, Chief Information Officer of Relation}

As Relation pursues other AI opportunities across its business, it needs to be able to develop and deploy new tools quickly, trust that they will work with the agency’s data, and be able to track and report on metrics to Relation’s parent company, Bay Pine. 

The agency also needs to be confident that any new AI tools meet the security and compliance requirements of the insurance industry. Relation needs flexible technology built for insurance.

Solution: Vertafore strengthens the data foundation that AI needs

Relation is relying on Vertafore as a key partner in its next stage of AI progress. The partnership is focused on addressing how AI capabilities fit into the agency’s actual business and technology strategy. 

Vertafore’s work on data has helped fuel Relation’s AI initiatives, creating a stronger foundation for the agency to pursue more advanced automation and agentic workflows. Relation uses RiskMatch to see industry mapping, relationships, and market appetite, connected to RelationGPT, so they can quickly find out how much business they’re doing in a certain place. And connections between Vertafore’s AMS360 and Salesforce help Relation report key metrics to its parent company.

“Vertafore understands they’re not building a walled garden ecosystem of AI,” Toran says. “They understand what we’re building, and they’re making some of the tools agnostic to the platform so we can plug and play and build out the AI strategies together.”

That collaborative model helps Relation move faster and think more creatively while building a tech stack around what works best for them. 

Partnership: Innovation moves faster when ideas can become demos

The pace of AI development has changed what partnership can look like. Leaders from Relation and Vertafore have been able to come together and work through ideas in open conversation, discuss what would and would not work for Relation, and explore how new capabilities could connect across systems. Toran describes the partnership with Vertafore as “a working session instead of a SKU.”

As AI innovation accelerates, businesses no longer have the luxury of taking time to plan, develop, and onboard staff to new tech. Now, ideas can become working prototypes much faster. 

“These are not nine-month solutions anymore; they’re nine hours,” Toran says. “It’s compressed that time down so we can iterate and do prototypes very quickly.”

That speed makes openness and curiosity more important. Relation wanted a partner that is willing to iterate, test, and learn alongside the agency. They see that same mindset in Vertafore’s product and technology teams.

We have a joke internally: demos instead of memos. Getting to that show-it-to-me stage matters, and Vertafore has that same innate curiosity as we do,”

_{Mike Toran, Chief Information Officer of Relation}

Outcome: Less friction, more time for customers

The agency is looking at AI as a way to help employees work more effectively, reduce repetitive or manual tasks, and spend more time understanding clients and their needs. That human-centered goal is central to how Relation talks about AI internally and externally.

“We’re obviously not looking to reduce headcount,” Toran says. “We’re looking to engage with our customers more. We want our people to get rid of the frictional work and spend more time getting to know the customer and understanding the customer’s needs.”

That shift is already influencing the agency’s culture. Employees have seen what RelationGPT can do, and Relation is giving more advanced tools to teams in other departments. Employees are also beginning to imagine their own agents and use cases. The agency can then evaluate which ideas should be scaled and brought into the enterprise.

With Vertafore helping strengthen the data foundation and bringing a collaborative AI approach to the partnership, Relation is better positioned to keep evolving its strategy. The agency can evaluate new workflows, connect new capabilities, and continue building toward an AI-enabled future where employees have better tools and customers receive better service.

For agencies still deciding whether AI belongs in their strategy, Toran says the tools are too useful to ignore. “The tools are just so good. You’re going to find value in your organization.”