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I've noticed something in meetings lately. Business owners aren't just showing up with a stack of last year's policy documents anymore - they're showing up with questions. Real ones. The kind that used to only come from people who'd been burned before.
They've done their research. They've asked AI. They've challenged an assumption or two before we've even gotten through introductions.
Some people in this industry find that threatening. I find it refreshing.
What Does It Mean to "Claudit" Your Insurance?
A few years ago I got introduced to the concept of "They Ask, You Answer" from Marcus Sheridan. The idea is simple: be so transparent and educational that informed buyers seek you out instead of away from you.
AI has put that idea on fast forward.
Business owners are now "Clauditing" their coverage - running their policy terms, their renewal quotes, their agent's recommendations through an AI chat tool before deciding what to do with them. Researching what an endorsement actually covers. Questioning why a limit looks low for their industry. Showing up with real questions instead of just signing what's put in front of them.
That's exactly how it should work.
Why We Welcome an Informed Client
At Top O' Michigan, we've always believed the best insurance relationships are a two-way conversation, not a paperwork handoff. When a client walks in already understanding the difference between actual cash value and replacement cost, or already knows to ask why their liability limit is set where it is, that's not a harder meeting for us - it's a better one. It means we can spend our time on what actually matters: making sure your coverage fits your risk, not just running through boilerplate.
We'd rather work as a team with our clients than as a vendor to them. An advisor worth hiring welcomes good questions. If yours gets defensive when you ask them, that's worth paying attention to - that's a warning sign, not a personality quirk.
How to Use AI Without Letting It Steer You Wrong
Here's the catch, and it's an important one: AI is a great tool for helping you ask better questions. It's a much riskier tool for giving you final answers about your own coverage.
A general-purpose AI model doesn't know your policy. It doesn't know Michigan's No-Fault rules, your specific location's risk exposure, or what your carrier actually filed for your industry class. It's trained to sound confident whether it's right or not - and that's exactly where business owners can get steered wrong, the same way people get steered wrong trusting the first answer in a Google search.
So use it the way we'd use a good pre-meeting brief:
- Ask it to explain terms you don't recognize before your renewal call.
- Ask it what questions similar businesses typically ask their broker.
- Ask it to help you compare coverage concepts - not to give you a final verdict on what you should buy.
Then bring what you found to someone licensed to actually answer it for your business. That's the point of "Clauditing" your insurance - it's supposed to start a better conversation, not replace one.
Where to Start
If you want to get ahead of this yourself, that's exactly why we built our Insurance 101 page - plain-English breakdowns of the terms and coverage concepts business owners ask us about most. It's a good place to start before you ever pick up the phone, and it's the kind of resource we're glad to see people lean on more, whether that's from us directly or from an AI tool pointing them there first.
When you're ready to talk through what you find, give us a call at 800-686-8664 or request a quote - we'd genuinely rather answer your questions than avoid them.
What's Coming Next
This is the first in a short series. Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some of the best ways to actually use AI when evaluating your insurance program, and the red flags to watch for when it might be steering you wrong (like trusting the top answer in a Google search). Stay tuned.
Coverage is subject to underwriting, and nothing discussed here is bound until confirmed by an authorized representative.