ERGO recently released a report in partnership with Google Cloud that explores how self-evolving AI agents can help insurance companies capture, preserve, and extend undocumented institutional knowledge that is at risk of loss, enabling long-term access to this knowledge across the organization.
The ERGO Innovation Lab, in partnership with Google Cloud, has released a report examining how companies, particularly insurance companies, can use adaptive AI agents to capture, preserve and extend unrecorded experiential knowledge (often referred to as “tribal knowledge”).
The report notes that a large proportion of business-related knowledge is neither formally recorded nor systematically captured. Rather, it is embedded in daily work, situational decisions, or in employees themselves.
The report also warns that a large proportion of insurance professionals are expected to retire in the coming years, increasing the risk of losing decades of expertise.
According to the German Insurance Association (GDV, German only), a quarter of employees in the German insurance industry belong to the baby boom generation. As a result, a large portion of this highly skilled workforce is expected to retire within the next five years, bringing with them decades of work experience.
The report highlights that, in the long term, “self-evolving” or “self-improving” agents can help preserve this knowledge and make it easily accessible.
These agents are adaptive AI systems that can not only perform tasks, but also review their own policies, workflows, and in some cases, even their own architecture over time and make adjustments and improvements when necessary.
The report includes concrete implementation examples of an “AI content engine” and further recommendations for the future deployment of such agents across the insurance company value chain.
Emilia Dang, innovation developer at AnGu Innovation Lab “The next stage in the evolution of agent AI involves not only greater automation, but also how companies preserve, develop and exploit knowledge. This is increasingly important given demographic changes and the growing shortage of skilled workers. In fact, without a sustainable strategy, organizations risk losing decision-making criteria, contextual knowledge and practical experience. The value of self-evolving agents lies where traditional automation ends: experience, context and judgment. It is they who can help systematically capture individual expertise across generations and transform it into scalable institutional knowledge.”
Michael Zimmermann, principal engineer at Google Cloud, added: “In highly regulated industries like insurance, the true power of agent AI lies in human-guided autonomy. By combining Google Cloud’s secure, scalable AI ecosystem with ERGO’s deep domain expertise, this white paper provides a forward-looking blueprint for responsibly preserving and expanding institutional knowledge.”
