Scout InsurTech Rising with Roots

Chaz Perera is Co-Founder and CEO of Roots, a leading provider of AI-powered solutions for the insurance industry. Chaz was interviewed by Chris Luiz, Co-Founder and CEO at Scout InsurTech.

Roots concluded its Series B funding late last year. How are you prioritizing projects, and how is that changing the company?

“We’re fortunate at Roots to partner with exceptional institutional investors—both existing and new—to significantly push forward how artificial intelligence shapes the future of work within insurance. One major challenge the insurance industry has faced consistently over the past decade is a vacancy rate hovering around 10 percent, meaning roughly 400,000 open positions annually across the U.S. Interestingly, this statistic is evolving; the vacancies previously centered around roles like underwriters and claims adjusters are now shifting toward specialized roles, specifically data scientists, machine learning engineers and general technology engineering positions.

Our current prioritization is aimed at leveraging our recent investments to scale the great internal achievements we've made at Roots. Historically, we’ve developed AI in the form of specialized AI agents capable of handling complex underwriting and claims tasks. Now, we're making these capabilities accessible more broadly through an AI agent platform, enabling insurers to deploy agents across a wide range of roles, not just limited to underwriting or claims, but extending into finance, HR and IT. The backbone of these AI agents is built upon extensive AI training. We trained our models last year on over 250 million unique, previously inaccessible insurance documents. This extensive training empowers insurers with improved efficiencies, significantly enhancing submission-to-quote ratios for underwriters and accelerating claims processing for adjusters.”

What are the areas within insurance most ripe to recognize value from AI right now?

“Insurance companies may find my perspective challenging, but historically, they've directed AI efforts towards niche, esoteric problems rather than addressing higher-volume, operationally intensive tasks. We recently rebranded from Roots Automation to simply Roots, reflecting our broader shift in philosophy—from legacy automation focused on repetitive task elimination toward leveraging modern, generative AI. This shift allows insurers to deploy AI agents capable of managing processes end-to-end—like fully underwriting low-complexity opportunities or dramatically speeding up the processing of more complex submissions.

In practical terms, applying AI to routine operational challenges such as rapidly processing submissions is immensely valuable. For instance, insurers frequently experience delays of days or even weeks to process submissions, whereas leveraging our AI technology can shorten this significantly. The insurance industry's conventional wisdom still holds true: if you quote business first, you're highly likely to win it. Addressing this type of high-volume operational challenge delivers immediate value and competitive advantages.”

Do you have predictions for a realistic timeline for insurers to use agentic AI productively and achieve meaningful ROI?

“First, I’d clarify terminology—’agentic AI’ is often misused. True agentic AI, fully autonomous and independent from human oversight, doesn't yet exist. However, products like our AI Agents at Roots closely approximate this concept. Our customers typically achieve measurable ROI very quickly: insurers generally see tangible value within three months of implementation, and since deployment usually takes around three months from signing with us, meaningful positive returns become evident within approximately six months total.

This quick turnaround reflects modern AI's efficiency—insurers no longer need lengthy, uncertain five-year commitments. Instead, they experience immediate, measurable impacts, validating their investments and allowing rapid operational improvements without prolonged uncertainty.”

What recent achievements, either product or people-related, at Roots are you most proud of?

“A major milestone we've reached recently, and one we're particularly proud of, is opening our underlying AI platform to our customers. Previously, this platform was an internal tool used exclusively by Roots to build and train our proprietary AI Agents. Now, insurance companies no longer solely depend on us for AI Agent development and delivery. While we remain committed to providing ready-built AI Agents, insurers can independently leverage our platform to create customized AI Agents tailored to their specific operational needs and strategic goals.

By making this shift, we are effectively putting powerful technology into the hands of industry experts, facilitating greater innovation, deeper customization and wider adoption of AI across the insurance sector.”

What's your vision for Roots over the next 12 to 24 months? What should people be watching for?

“Over the next 12 to 24 months, Roots is poised to further revolutionize the insurance industry by expanding our agentic AI capabilities. Our vision encompasses five strategic focus areas:

• Enhancing document comprehension with InsurGPT™: Building upon our success in processing over 300 million unique insurance documents with 98%+ accuracy, we aim to deepen InsurGPT™ capabilities. This includes continued refinement of ‘turnkey’ models that make it easier for insurers to quickly access data within unstructured documents such as ACORD forms, loss runs, schedules, medical and legal correspondence.

  
  

• Expanding AI Agent capabilities across insurance processes: Our AI Agents have already demonstrated the ability to automate complex tasks within underwriting, claims handling and policy administration, reducing process times by up to 97 percent. Recognizing the needs and unique workflows of insurance companies, we plan to design additional AI Agents tailored to tasks in subrogation, risk appetite classification and compliance, further streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency.

  
  

• Seamless integration with diverse workflows and technologies: We are committed to ensuring our solutions can interact with various applications and platforms without extensive configuration. By expanding our capabilities to tackle legacy system automation using natural language prompts and agentic AI concepts, we aim to minimize the cost, complexity and burden of automation integrations within existing technology infrastructures.

  
  

• Expanding the autonomous workforce platform: Understanding insurers' desire to be self-sufficient, our platform will become increasingly easier for a non-technical person to train their own AI agents to work on complex processes. 

  
  

• Maintaining a strong focus on security and compliance: Our commitment to the highest standards of data security and regulatory compliance remains unwavering. We adhere to eight key concepts as part of our ethical AI methodology, including transparency, explainability, reliability, privacy, fairness, rigorous testing, data governance and fostering human-AI collaboration. In recognizing the importance of this, we also just released a valuable eBook on AI committees.

  
  

Roots is continuously evolving its AI platform to incorporate deeper and more comprehensive insurance expertise—moving from completing simple, low judgement end-to-end process automation to empowering Roots AI Agents, within customer defined guidelines, to make decisions on increasingly more complex use cases. 

Ultimately, we aim to free insurance experts from routine desk work, empowering them to focus on high-value, personalized interactions with customers—dramatically enhancing the customer experience and allowing insurers to truly deliver on their brand promises.”