Beyond Automation: The Real Power of AI in Insurance Claims — with Grace Hanson, CEO of Elysian

This week I was joined by Grace Hanson, CEO of Elysian, who’s on a mission to fix one of the most overlooked parts of insurance: claims handling.

“People underestimate how much profit lives in the claims department — and how much value is wasted when it’s not run well,”

Grace calls Elysian an AI-native outsourced claims service — but what that really means is her team uses their own technology to handle commercial claims better than traditional models allow. Faster answers. Better data. Fewer inconsistencies. All designed by people who’ve actually sat in the adjuster’s chair.

Some highlights from our chat...

📚 From Courtrooms to Claims:

Grace shared how she went from practicing law to leading claims teams — a move she made after having a baby and realizing, “I needed balance — but I also needed work that challenged me.” Turns out the strategic, big-picture thinking she honed as a lawyer was exactly what complex claims needed.

📊 Claims: Insurance’s Hidden Profit Engine:

We talked about why claims teams rarely get the spotlight — despite being the lever for an insurer’s profit and reputation. As Grace put it, “If you don’t run claims well, you don’t make money. Full stop.”

🤖 What AI Actually Fixes:

Grace told a great story about her time at Homeside — rolling out AI and machine learning to detect fraud and speed up everyday decisions. “You can’t fix just one piece. If the rest of the process is clunky, the tech is wasted,” she said.

⚙️ Why Elysian Exists:

How five years of tech advancements made Grace’s vision of an AI-native claims solution finally possible — and why now is the time to fix an industry pain point that’s too costly to ignore.

🔥 Protecting People, Not Just Automating Jobs:

Why better tech should empower adjusters to focus on high-value work — and how Grace’s team is tackling burnout by design. I loved Grace’s honesty when she said, “Adjusters burn out because they’re stuck doing repetitive tasks — our tech frees them up to do the hard thinking, the negotiation, the human work that actually matters.”

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