What we learned at Insurance Innovators USA: The age of ‘DIY’ inspections has arrived

Last month, the Truepic team joined hundreds of industry leaders in Nashville for Insurance Innovators USA 2025. The energy was high, and the message was clear: the insurance industry is deep in a period of transformation, from how risk is assessed to how policyholders interact with carriers.

We were proud to take the stage alongside EXL, a leading provider of digital insurance surveys and inspection solutions, for a session titled “Underwriting in a DIY World: Smarter Self-Inspections at Scale.” Together, we shared a blueprint for how carriers can embrace virtual inspections while maintaining accuracy, reducing fraud risk, and improving operational performance.

Here are the four key themes that emerged from the event, which we believe every carrier should be thinking about as they adapt their decisioning and tool implementation for both the needs and risks of today’s policyholder.

1. Virtual inspections are no longer a “nice to have”—they’re now table stakes

User expectations have evolved dramatically in just a few years. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, policyholders have become increasingly accustomed to seamless, on-demand experiences with their carriers, including inspections. It’s now estimated that nearly 60% of insurance required home property inspections are completed virtually. 

And it’s clear that the shift from onsite to ‘DIY’, virtual inspections is here to stay. During our session, EXL shared that 80% of their users chose to initiate inspections themselves, signaling a clear preference for the speed and convenience of digital self-surveys.

For carriers, enabling this kind of flexibility isn’t just about customer satisfaction. It’s also a gateway to improved operational efficiency and better risk visibility at scale.

2. AI-generated fraud is forcing a new standard for visual evidence

One of the more urgent challenges discussed at the event was the growing sophistication of AI-generated fraud.

Thanks to advancements in generative AI tools, users can now produce hyper-realistic images of property damage in seconds. That creates a real risk for carriers who rely on user-submitted photos and videos in their underwriting and claims decisions.

As virtual inspections become more widely adopted , insurers need to reframe the conversation from whether to switch to virtual inspections, and instead, to how to select the most effective virtual solution for mitigating insurance fraud risk.

This is ultimately because images can no longer be taken at face value. Carriers must begin implementing processes that verify not just what is submitted, but how it was captured—ensuring that media is authentic, untampered, and contextually accurate.

It’s no longer enough to manually review an image. It has to be trusted from the moment of capture.

3. Without authenticated data, AI automation cannot deliver real gains

The buzz around AI-powered underwriting capabilities continues to grow. But before carriers implement new automation tools, there’s an important prerequisite they need to account for: data quality.

When it comes to virtual inspections, carriers must have confidence in the underlying authenticity of the photos and videos they receive from policyholders. If the content feeding your models is unreliable, then risk scoring, coverage decisions, and pricing outcomes will reflect that.

In short, you must be able to trust the fundamental accuracy of your underwriting decisions in order to realize any of AI's promised efficiency gains.

4. AI can enhance, but not replace, existing underwriting processes 

Despite rapid advances in automation, underwriting still benefits from human context and judgment—especially as fraud tactics continue to evolve and edge cases become more complex.

While AI can streamline review, surface insights, and accelerate decision-making, expert human review remains a critical safeguard.

Many of the conversations at Insurance Innovators underscored this hybridized future where underwriters are empowered by technology, not replaced by it. This is particularly important in virtual inspection workflows, where AI flags the anomalies and edge cases for a human to review.

Final thoughts

What became clear at Insurance Innovators is that the future of inspections is increasingly customer-initiated through virtual self-service. But speed without trust creates risk. For insurers to succeed in today's DIY landscape, they’ll need to implement solutions that support scale and safeguard integrity.

The shift to virtual inspections isn’t coming—it’s already here. The question now is how carriers can ensure these inspections are not just efficient, but also trustworthy.

At Truepic, that’s the challenge we’re focused on solving. And we’re grateful to be in conversation with forward-thinking leaders who see both the opportunity and the responsibility of this next chapter.