Amid volatile markets and emerging technologies, the insurance industry’s landscape continues to evolve. For an industry that relies on having a strong network for investments, dealmaking and data gathering, an effective way to navigate this environment is to bring leaders from the biggest firms together in one place.

That value was on full display at the fourth annual BMO Insurance Distribution Forum in Beverly Hills, which featured timely discussions with industry experts on everything from attracting and retaining young talent, building integrated platforms, the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the insurance industry to how the M&A landscape is shifting.

Here are some of my takeaways from this event.

Elevated interest rates have increased financing costs and pressured valuations, contributing to a more selective deal market.

Unlike in past years, when buyers pursued large, historically profitable companies, today’s deals need to have a clear strategic role and show that they can deliver sustainable growth across market cycles. The preference today is for acquisitions that are accretive from day one, either through specialty offerings or better client service or talent, rather than just adding scale.

Overall, M&A activity is increasingly focused on driving organic and inorganic growth, enabling cross-selling opportunities and leveraging subject-matter expertise across an integrated platform.

With fewer tailwinds from rates and a tougher growth backdrop, buyers are prioritizing firms with fully integrated models – centralized back offices and common agency management systems, which make it easier to scale, leverage data and deploy AI tools.

Firms that operate this way can use analytics to drive pricing, make informed decisions about their customers’ needs and place business more efficiently. The more integrated the firm, the better it can identify homogeneous pools of business and then design a program to serve those segments. This structure also strengthens negotiating power with carriers and supports scalable growth.

This more integrated approach helps protect margins and offers greater competitive differentiation. Integration may not require overhauling a company’s brand into one combined entity. As one panelist noted, some buyers do consolidate branding, but others successfully bring in the back office into the business while preserving their local, customer-facing identities.

A recurring theme at the conference was the aging workforce. While the industry is actively working to change that by recruiting the next generation, the challenge has been how long it takes young professionals to become productive and how difficult it can be to retain them once they are.

To improve productivity, firms are exploring ways to use AI to train and onboard staff. Getting staff up to speed may be an important goal, but in an ultra-competitive industry like this one, poaching talent is common. Younger professionals, especially those without meaningful equity in their current firms, are the most willing to move. As one panel noted, the industry needs to do more to show these employees their value and a clear path to ownership.

Building this talent pipeline is critical. Without investing in recruiting and productivity, sustaining organic growth becomes even harder. One panelist pointed out that departures of key talent tend to happen in waves, so recommends not waiting years to act until a single big exit.

After talent, companies may find growth opportunities in technology infrastructure. The goal should be to find ways to help underwriters and brokers reduce the time it takes to generate a quote. Often this means developing purpose-built systems, rather than generic software. For some, that also means embedding AI.

During last year’s conference, there was a lot of discussion about how AI was playing a bigger role in the back office, supporting transactional tasks like payments and simple policy changes. Some companies were also using AI to innovate products faster than their competitors.

This year, in addition to those opportunities, using AI to improve data quality emerged as a new theme. As one panel noted, data degradation remains a challenge for the industry, as information gets muddied each time it is handed off from MGAs to carriers before reaching reinsurers. With each step, the data becomes less complete, less granular and less timely; one panelist noted reinsurers may not always have visibility into what they underwrite.

To ensure AI models are powered by the best available data, some firms are exploring whether they can also use AI to improve data quality. This could involve using technology to capture more data from partners, speed up data ingestion or leverage third-party data to validate and enrich information and fill gaps. Others are using tools that can draft and edit text, answer questions and summarize documents.

Regardless of how AI is deployed, its impact remains undeniable. One executive described this as a watershed moment in technology. First, there was the PC, then the internet and mobile, but AI, he predicts, will be more impactful on the industry than all three of those combined.