InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens Sasha Haco, CEO & Co-founder: Unitary: From black holes to bordereaux: building AI agents for insurance (401)
In this episode, Robin Merttens speaks with Sasha Haco, CEO and Co-founder of Unitary, about how AI is being applied in practical, high-impact ways across insurance operations.
Sasha’s route into the industry is far from typical. With a background in astrophysics and no prior experience in insurance, she set out to build something tangible using AI, focusing on real-world problems rather than theoretical ones.
What began as a mission to make the internet safer has evolved into a fast-growing platform that automates some of the most manual and time-consuming processes in insurance. From bordereaux handling to claims and policy administration, the focus is on removing repetitive work without requiring insurers to overhaul their existing systems.
Drawing on her experience building Unitary from the ground up, Sasha shares a clear and practical perspective on where AI is delivering value today, how insurers can get started quickly and what it takes to stand out in an increasingly competitive market.
At the heart of the discussion is a simple idea: meaningful progress often starts with tackling the most overlooked and operationally painful tasks.
In this conversation, Sasha shares:
- Why coming from outside insurance can unlock new ways of solving entrenched problems
- How virtual agents can replicate human workflows across legacy systems without integration
- Where insurers are seeing the fastest returns from automation today
- Why speed to ROI is becoming a defining factor in AI adoption
- How trust and customer outcomes are emerging as key competitive advantages
- What it takes to build and scale in a crowded AI landscape
- Why the biggest barrier to automation is often mindset, not technology
If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Robin Merttens on LinkedIn.
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