WebMCP: what it means for insurance and reinsurance firms

A reinsurance broker is placing a property catastrophe treaty. Five carriers, each with their own web-based submission portal. The broker logs into each one separately, rekeying cedant information, uploading the same documentation and manually tracking where each placement stands. Meanwhile the client waits for market feedback that’s already sitting in systems nobody can connect.

That workflow may be about to change.

The real problem isn’t technology. It’s friction.

Insurance and reinsurance have invested billions in digital platforms over the past decade. Underwriting workbenches. Claims management systems. Broker portals. Risk analytics dashboards. Client self-service tools. Most of these work well in isolation.

The problem is what happens between them.

For clients, friction shows up at the moments that matter most. Insurity’s 2025 Digital Experience Index found that 22% of consumers have avoided filing a claim entirely because the process was too frustrating. 64% said they’d switch insurers for a better digital experience. The problem isn’t that clients are logging into multiple systems. It’s that the systems serving them don’t share context, so every interaction feels like starting from scratch. Filing a claim means filling out forms with information the insurer already has. Checking status means waiting for callbacks because there’s no real-time visibility. Renewing a policy means repeating conversations because nothing carries over from the last touchpoint.

For brokers, it means a disproportionate share of the working day spent on administrative navigation rather than client advisory. Rekeying data from one system to another. Manually assembling risk information that exists in separate tools. Tracking status updates across carrier portals instead of developing placement strategy.

For carriers and underwriters, the same story plays out from their side. Submissions arrive in inconsistent formats. Adjusters spend one to three days per claim just gathering and interpreting documents before they can start making decisions. Underwriters rekey data from loss runs into pricing models when the numbers already exist somewhere in the ecosystem.

Accenture found that up to 40% of claims professionals’ time goes to non-core administrative tasks. That’s not a technology gap. It’s a connectivity gap.

What’s actually changing

Google and Microsoft have jointly backed a new browser standard called WebMCP. The first working implementation shipped in Chrome last month.

At a business level, this standard enables AI agents to interact with web-based applications through structured, secure interfaces. Rather than relying on screen-scraping or visual recognition of user interfaces, applications define their capabilities as tools that AI agents can call directly. The distinction matters: instead of automation that breaks when a screen layout changes, you get integration that remains stable because it’s built on defined contracts between systems.

This matters because insurance runs on web-based platforms. And until now, AI agents had no reliable way to work across them.

What this unlocks across the value chain

For brokers and placement

The major broking firms have already built AI-powered platforms for exactly this kind of work. Aon’s Broker Copilot captures and structures submission data to provide live market intelligence on pricing and carrier appetite. Marsh McLennan’s LenAI platform has saved over a million hours through agentic AI across its operations. WTW’s Radar 5 suite combines generative AI with machine learning to accelerate pricing, portfolio management and underwriting decisions. Now imagine platforms like these with their capabilities exposed via WebMCP, allowing AI agents to pull real-time intelligence directly into placement workflow. Not by a broker manually checking a dashboard but by an agent carrying that intelligence forward as it prepares submissions across multiple carrier portals.

When carrier platforms also expose WebMCP tools, placement workflows become more collaborative. An AI agent could assemble risk data from a broker’s analytics platform, cross-reference it with live market pricing and prepare a higher-quality submission tailored to each carrier’s requirements. The broker spends less time on data assembly and more time on the advisory work that clients actually value.

Carriers get cleaner submissions. Brokers reclaim time for client strategy and market relationships. Clients get better outcomes. And because data flows through structured tool calls rather than manual rekeying, the risk of transcription errors and missed information drops significantly. That’s a measurable reduction in E&O exposure without changing the broker’s advisory role or the carrier’s underwriting process.

For carriers and underwriters

Underwriters today spend significant time pulling data from loss runs, catastrophe models and exposure databases that live in separate browser-based tools. If those platforms expose WebMCP tools, an AI agent could gather and synthesise that information before the underwriter opens the file. The underwriter starts with a complete, structured view of the risk without spending the first hour assembling it manually. The key point: this is driven by the carrier’s own tooling and the carrier’s own decisions about what to expose. Nothing happens without the platform owner opting in.

Carriers are already investing heavily in AI-powered underwriting. Zurich has deployed over 200 AI tools across its operations and recently launched Program IQ, an AI-enabled system that reviews thousands of pages of multinational policy wording to flag coverage gaps and sublimit discrepancies. If platforms like these expose WebMCP tools, carriers’ own AI agents could pull structured risk data directly into their underwriting workflows without manual handoff between systems. The analytics provider doesn’t control the process. Their data simply becomes a seamless part of how carriers assess and price risk.

For claims

Major brokers and carriers have already launched AI-powered claims platforms that integrate analytics with advocacy, giving clients faster resolutions and better visibility into carrier performance. WebMCP could take this kind of capability further across the industry. During catastrophe events when claims teams face overwhelming volume spikes, AI agents could work across claims platforms to classify incoming documents, validate coverage and route cases to the appropriate workflow. Structured tool-based interaction means the automation is reliable and maintainable, not dependent on fragile screen-level integration.

Allianz already proved this model works. Their “Project Nemo” agentic AI deployment cut simple claim processing from days to hours after major storms. WebMCP makes that kind of capability more reliable and easier to scale across the industry.

For clients

The client experience is where all of these improvements converge. When the systems behind a client’s interaction share context through structured AI interfaces, the experience changes fundamentally. A client reporting a claim doesn’t re-enter information the insurer already holds. They get real-time visibility into progress without waiting for callbacks. The person helping them has the full picture immediately because AI agents have already assembled it from across the relevant platforms. That’s the difference between “let me look into that and get back to you” and “I can see exactly where this stands, here’s what happens next.”

Why this matters for broking firms

Large reinsurance brokers sit at the centre of the insurance ecosystem. Their platforms connect cedants to carriers, analytics to decisions, risk to capital. That position means something specific when it comes to WebMCP.

If both sides of the market start adopting this standard, broking firms could explore AI-powered placement and advisory workflows that work across the broader ecosystem. Risk analytics tools could evolve from dashboards that humans check into structured data sources that authorised AI agents can query. AI-powered broking and claims platforms could become integration points that connect carrier systems to client outcomes.

The major broking firms have already made significant investments in AI-powered placement, claims and risk analytics platforms. WebMCP is the kind of infrastructure that could extend the reach of those tools beyond their current boundaries.

But there’s an even bigger opportunity. Broking firms sitting at the intersection of carriers, cedants and capital are well-positioned to participate in the development of inter-organisational agentic AI through open standards like WebMCP. Not just adopting the standard internally but engaging with carriers and clients on how the wider market could benefit. An insurance ecosystem where AI agents work across organisational boundaries through structured protocols, with each participant choosing what to expose and on what terms, would benefit everyone involved. Placements move faster without sacrificing accuracy. Claims resolve sooner without compromising governance. Risk gets priced with better data without requiring carriers to overhaul their own systems. Capital reaches where it’s needed with less friction and lower operational cost.

That’s not just a technology play. It’s shaping decisions for the better across the entire market.

The governance question

Senior leaders will rightly ask about security and oversight. This is a regulated industry. Audit trails aren’t optional.

WebMCP was designed with this in mind. Every AI agent action is trackable. The protocol distinguishes between human and agent-initiated actions at the server level. Sensitive operations require human confirmation before executing. All interactions stay within the browser’s existing security boundaries.

When a regulator asks “how was this placement decision informed?” or “what data supported this claims outcome?” the answer needs to be traceable. WebMCP’s design supports that transparency from the ground up.

What leaders should be asking

The technical specification is secondary. What matters is whether your organisation is positioned to benefit from this shift.

Where are experienced professionals spending time on administration instead of decisions? AI agents working across platforms can recover that capacity without adding headcount or disrupting existing workflows.

Which client interactions create friction that risks retention? Structured AI integration can improve those experiences without requiring a full platform replacement. The systems stay. The connections between them improve.

Are your platforms ready to participate in the agentic ecosystem? Organisations that define what tools their applications expose will be able to adopt these capabilities quickly. Those that haven’t will face longer lead times without a clear path to catching up.

Who will lead this conversation in the market? Firms already investing in AI-powered broking, claims and analytics tools have built foundations that WebMCP could extend. Open standards mean this isn’t about proprietary lock-in. It’s about whether the industry moves together or in fragments.

Looking ahead

The pattern across the industry is consistent: the organisations extracting the most value from AI are not the ones with the most advanced models. They are the ones solving the connection problem between AI capabilities and the systems where work happens.

WebMCP addresses a specific connection problem that insurance and reinsurance have been working around for years. It connects AI agents to the browser-based platforms that run the industry without requiring those platforms to be rebuilt. And it does this in a way that is secure, auditable and built on open standards backed by Google and Microsoft.

Boston Consulting Group published research in January calling AI agents a new phase in insurance operations. Microsoft’s latest analysis shows insurers are among the highest concentration of firms embedding AI agents deeply into their work. The Chrome implementation is live. Edge support is coming. The W3C specification is targeting completion this quarter.

The infrastructure is arriving. The industry direction is clear. The question for leaders in insurance and reinsurance is how their organisations will participate in shaping this ecosystem as it develops.