Insurers race to capture value from agentic AI. Allstate is preparing to do business with personal agents while Manulife is eyeing $1 billion in enterprise AI value by next year. Published Nov. 6, 2026 Insurance giant Allstate is looking to strike a balance between reducing costs and funding technology investments as it strives to carve out a place for itself in an agentic marketplace. Personal agentic AI assistants such as Meta's Muse give Allstate the opportunity to serve customers who prefer machines to handle transactions, CEO Tom Wilson told investors during the company's Q3 2026 earnings call Wednesday. Wilson said Allstate's goal is to work with outside agents, not against them, to show customers branded products as they interact. "We will be available to all personal agents," he said during the call. It's another example of Allstate's aggressive push to capitalize on AI as several industry players pursue the technology's adoption. Earlier this year, the insurer introduced its proprietary agentic AI platform: Allstate's large language intelligent ecosystem, known as Allie, to handle agent-to-agent processing. On Wednesday, Wilson said the rollout is accelerating. He also reported that 97% of employees are now certified as AI-enabled, AI code production was 3.6 times higher in Q3 than in Q1, and Ask Allstate, a customer service AI assistant that the company launched in July, is managing 15% of chat volume with good results. Next year, the company is aiming to push even more into personal assistants with the launch of its own protection-focused personal AI agent, which plays a part in Allstate's strategy to work with outside agents and get their insurance product in front of customers. Allstate's AI agent will bring the company's own expertise and price comparison ability to bear, giving third-party agents a product to route customers to, which Wilson described as a "win-win for everybody." "Its value proposition includes more accurate pricing given our insurance expertise than the general purpose [personal agentic assistants] will have," he said. "It will also provide consumers with context on the type of coverage that's right for them and straight-through processing." Along with AI progress, Wilson also addressed how it is reconciling the uptick in the company's investment in technology, which includes higher software and computing costs. "We've made a lot of changes in the way we deploy technology," he said. "Today, we have 25% fewer people in technology than we did four years ago, and that's not just using AI." Getting the most value out of AI. As insurer Manulife scales its AI capabilities, it's plotting a course toward $1 billion in total enterprise AI value by 2027, a goal CEO Phil Witherington told investors the company is well on its way to achieving. "Becoming an AI-powered organization is key to improving experiences, transforming process, creating greater competitive differentiation and delivering value," Witherington said during the company's Q3 2026 earnings call Wednesday. During the quarter, Witherington said Manulife expanded its strategic partnership with Microsoft, extending Copilot access to more than 30,000 employees and deploying Microsoft Agent 365 to "enhance productivity, support innovation and strengthen enterprise AI governance."

Doctor ordered Tylenol, pharmacy billed five drugs, Allstate alleges. The medical records showed one order: Tylenol. The pharmacy billed five drugs Nov 04, 2026 What happened: Allstate alleges a New Jersey pharmacy operating from a hospital lobby submitted more than $524,000 in fraudulent No-Fault auto insurance claims for unnecessary prescription drugs. Who's involved: Four Allstate entities as plaintiffs; eMED Pharmacy Corp. and its two co-owners as defendants. What's at stake: More than $524,869 in actual damages, with triple damages sought under federal racketeering laws. Why it matters: The case maps out an alleged pharmacy billing pipeline from prescription steering through forged delivery receipts - a playbook claims and SIU teams will want to study. Where it stands: Complaint filed November 3, 2026. No court ruling yet. The medical records showed one drug order for the patient: over-the-counter Tylenol. But according to Allstate, the pharmacy had already billed for five prescription drugs under the same doctor's name. That detail sits at the center of a new federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York, where four Allstate entities allege eMED Pharmacy Corp. ran a No-Fault auto insurance billing scheme from inside a New Jersey hospital. The complaint, filed November 3, 2026, seeks more than $524,869 in damages - and triple that amount under federal racketeering laws. The pharmacy's address tells part of the story. eMED Pharmacy operated from the premises of Hudson Regional Hospital in Secaucus, New Jersey, under what the complaint calls a "Timeshare License Agreement." That agreement, according to the filing, only permitted the pharmacy to conduct "administrative functions" - not to run a full operation. The complaint alleges eMED Pharmacy's use of the hospital space was limited to morning and afternoon blocks on Monday through Thursday and a morning block on Friday, yet the pharmacy operated well beyond those hours. The hospital is owned by a non-party whom the complaint describes as having "a long and well-documented history of involvement in No-Fault fraud schemes." Allstate alleges this individual also controlled a network of surgery centers and medical clinics whose providers steered prescriptions to eMED Pharmacy. The alleged pipeline worked like this, according to the filing: marketers recruited prescribing providers into the pharmacy's referral network - a process the complaint calls "onboarding." Those providers, working at the hospital, affiliated surgery centers, and a chain of medical clinics, would phone in prescriptions for No-Fault auto accident claimants. The prescriptions were called in by telephone rather than sent through the electronic systems New York requires, because eMED Pharmacy sat across the state line in New Jersey and fell outside the electronic prescribing rules. One of the pharmacy's co-owners acknowledged this advantage under oath, the complaint states, telling questioners he could "actually quote you the law word for word" on the exemption. Telephone prescriptions were preferred, according to the filing, because eMED Pharmacy could bill for drugs without needing the prescriber's signature. Drugs before doctors. The complaint details several claims where prescriptions allegedly arrived at eMED Pharmacy before the patient ever saw the prescribing provider. In one case, the filing alleges a prescription for a combination pain drug was transmitted on March 19, 2024 - a day before the claimant's shoulder surgery on March 20, 2024. None of the surgical reports from that procedure mention the prescribed drug, the complaint states. In another case, the complaint says prescriptions were phoned in for a claimant on July 26, 2024. According to the filing, the provider's own examination report - from an appointment ten days earlier - did not include any prescription drug orders. The claimant did not undergo surgery with that provider until July 29, 2024. Then there is the billing gap the complaint highlights in a third claimant's file. According to the filing, a provider ordered just one medication for a surgical patient in his post-operative care plan: over-the-counter Tylenol. Yet eMED Pharmacy billed Allstate for five prescription drugs - esomeprazole magnesium, naproxen, ondansetron, Percocet, and docusate sodium - supported by telephone prescriptions under the same provider's name. Those prescriptions were transmitted nine days before the post-operative exam, according to the filing. When one of the co-owners was asked under oath whether it was possible the provider had not actually prescribed those medications, the complaint says he gave no response. The billing math. The complaint alleges the scheme pushed expensive prescription drugs when cheaper alternatives were available without a prescription. The filing singles out generic Vimovo - a combination pain and stomach-protection pill - which eMED Pharmacy allegedly billed at $2,149.60 for a 30-day supply. Both of its component drugs are available over the counter, the complaint states, for less than $50 combined. The wholesale cost to eMED Pharmacy was approximately $600, according to the filing. The complaint also alleges eMED Pharmacy billed over $2,154 for a 30-day supply of a topical anti-inflammatory spray that could be bought at wholesale for around $350. The filing states these medications were prescribed according to "predetermined protocols" regardless of medical need, and that many were not approved to treat the musculoskeletal injuries the claimants had reported. Marketers who steered prescriptions to the pharmacy were paid bonuses based on volume, the complaint alleges. Signatures that don't match. The filing goes further. The complaint alleges delivery receipts for several claimants contained "forged or unauthorized signatures," and includes side-by-side comparisons of claimants' actual signatures against those appearing on eMED Pharmacy's delivery documents. Allstate brings five claims: two federal racketeering counts, fraud, a claim for keeping money it should not have kept, and a request for a court order declaring eMED Pharmacy has no right to collect No-Fault payments. The racketeering counts carry the possibility of triple damages. The complaint alleges the scheme violated New Jersey's Codey Law, which bans practitioners from steering patients to healthcare services - including pharmacies - in which they or their close family members hold a financial interest. Allstate says providers at the hospital, its affiliated surgery centers, and a related chain of medical clinics all had prohibited financial ties to eMED Pharmacy through the hospital's ownership structure. The filing references four prior federal suits involving one of the co-owners in connection with other alleged No-Fault fraud schemes. Claims and SIU teams handling No-Fault pharmacy billing may want to note the specific mechanics alleged here: telephone prescriptions used to bypass electronic safeguards, prescriptions transmitted before patients were examined, and delivery receipts with mismatched signatures. The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any ruling on the merits.

Traffic data pioneer Inrix to be acquired by Allstate's Arity after more than two decades. by Lisa Stiffler on Oct 16, 2026 at 12:58 pm Inrix, the Bellevue, Wash.-based traffic data company that spun out of Microsoft in 2004 and became one of the Seattle region's longest-running independent tech companies, has agreed to sell substantially all of its assets to Arity, the mobility data subsidiary of insurance giant Allstate. The deal, announced Friday, would end Inrix's 22-year run as a standalone company. Inrix has raised more than $288 million and flirted with an IPO multiple times over its lifetime. Terms were not disclosed. The companies expect the acquisition to close later this year. Founded in 2016, Chicago-based Arity analyzes driving behavior for insurers, marketers and public-sector customers. It says it has amassed more than 3 trillion miles of driving data. The acquisition would pair that information with Inrix's analytics on traffic, road conditions and transportation networks. "By combining Arity's predictive insights on driving behavior and risk with Inrix's transportation intelligence and mobility analytics, we will be uniquely positioned to deliver more robust intelligence and insights into how people, vehicles, goods, and roads interact," Gary Hallgren, president of Arity, said in a statement. While the companies are touting the benefits of combining their data and analytics, Arity's data practices have faced legal scrutiny. In January 2025, Texas sued Allstate and Arity, alleging they collected and sold consumers' driving and location data without adequate consent. Responding to a separate consumer privacy lawsuit in March, Allstate told Reuters that users receive clear notice and explicitly opt in to sharing their driving data. The proposed acquisition charts an alternate course to Inrix's earlier plans for going public. In 2012, Inrix hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase with an eye toward a 2013 IPO that was expected to raise up to $100 million. The company looked to go public again in 2022 but backed out amid economic uncertainty stemming from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other factors. "We were about two weeks away from filing our documents with the SEC," Inrix CEO Bryan Mistele said in an August 2022 GeekWire story. "We're on standby right now, waiting to see when the markets and economy improve, in which case we'll take another run at it." Inrix serves corporate, automotive, technology and public-sector customers including Amazon, IBM, General Motors, Windermere Real Estate and state departments of transportation. The company got its start selling traffic and transportation-related data. In recent years, it moved beyond supplying raw traffic data into subscription software that helps customers interpret it, including tools for traffic-signal timing, road safety and retail site selection. Recent public releases include its first Parking Scorecard, which ranks the availability and cost of parking in major cities in the U.S. and Europe. Inrix has about 277 employees, based on LinkedIn data. The companies did not say whether all of them would remain or whether Inrix would keep its Bellevue headquarters. The story will be updated with additional information as it becomes available.