Indiana Farmers makes AI proficiency mandatory for all employees

Legacy carriers do not usually miss on AI because their core systems are too old. They miss because the culture, incentives and operating model never change, so the software sits on top of the same old habits. Indiana Farmers Insurance took a different route: it paired Pragmatico’s AI transformation work with a mandate that started with its 44-member leadership team and was later extended until AI proficiency became a requirement for all 250 employees.

That matters because Indiana Farmers, a mutual insurer founded in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1877, has spent more than a century and a half turning itself into something much more modern than its age suggests. The company issued its first policies in 1878, reorganized in 1881 and took the Indiana Farmers Mutual Insurance Company name in 1934. Its 2025 Diamond Profile put headquarters in Indianapolis and staff size at 236 employees, with talent in more than 10 states and year-over-year retention above 90%.

The company was not starting from zero on automation. It had already put AI into the operational backbone with auto claims estimation, aerial roof scoring and pricing algorithms, while generative AI for knowledge workers was still largely untouched. That split is exactly where many insurers stall: back-office efficiency gets automated, but the daily work of underwriting, claims and leadership still runs on human habit.

Pragmatico said the leadership rollout moved 44 senior leaders from a majority of non-users to 92% daily AI adoption in 16 weeks. Before the program, fewer than half of the leaders used AI daily, only 19% felt confident using it effectively, and the average self-rated proficiency was 3.5 out of 10. Afterward, confidence rose to 77% and average self-rated proficiency climbed to 6.4. Pragmatico said the group was saving 218 hours a week, equal to 5.4 full-time employees and about $1.05 million a year.

The playbook was not just training. Pragmatico said it built a Teams channel, a peer support network and training resources, and that weekly enterprise AI messages jumped from 4,473 in December to 15,059 in January. That is the real tell here: Indiana Farmers was changing behavior inside the workflow, not just installing another tool and hoping people would figure it out.

Lisa Cameron, Indiana Farmers’ chief human resources officer, and Santiago Jaramillo, Pragmatico’s co-founder and co-CEO, framed the work as culture change, not a headcount-reduction program. That distinction is why the carrier’s AI rollout looks more durable than a typical pilot. Indiana Farmers had already said in a 2023 CCC Intelligent Solutions announcement that AI-powered estimating could cut the time members spend without vehicles and free claims representatives to focus on relationships. The newer mandate pushes that same logic across the company, and it is the part other insurers should study closely: the software only sticks once leadership behavior, workforce expectations and operating norms move with it.