Shelter Insurance combines Content + AI across the business
Shelter Insurance, based in Columbia, Missouri, has been a trusted name in property, casualty, and life insurance for many decades. Today, the company operates in 15 states, and Box is the operational content layer underneath the policy, billing, claims, and digital components of the business.
Centralizing content on Box has made a huge difference in content management and efficiency, but it’s in combining Content + AI that Shelter is starting to achieve real, meaningful results from its partnership with Box.
Box COO Olivia Nottebohm recently sat down with Matt Schwartz, Vice President of Strategy at Shelter, who shared some insights into the company’s AI journey.
From an operational content layer to powerful AI capabilities
While Box was initially adopted as the content layer within the claims department a handful of years ago, Shelter has since expanded its use of Box across many parts of the business — and has also expanded its vision of how the company can tap into the true potential of Intelligent Content Management.
Schwartz explains, “We were already very comfortable with Box giving us visibility and an access point across our operations. But now, looking at how AI can really supercharge some of our use cases is very exciting for us.”
For instance, by automating certain workflows with Box AI, Shelter expects to cut claim payout times down from two weeks to just hours. He refers to Box as “an enterprise and strategic vendor as we go through a full-scale transformation of not only our core system but our business processes.”
The potential of AI to streamline tedious processes
For an insurance company like Shelter, core business priorities include underwriting (deciding which risks to take), managing claims efficiently, and making sure customers get the highest quality service.
“A lot of this is at the intersection of structured and unstructured data,” Schwartz notes. “And that’s where Box is really powerful.” He talks about a few key future use cases for Box AI.
1. Automated processing of claims documents
Typically, for any given insurance claim, an adjuster must read through all related paperwork manually to find key details like settlement offers and medical bill amounts — then enter them into various software systems one by one. “Demand packets” from attorneys can be hundreds of pages long, making it a time-consuming task. With Box data extraction, this process could be automated, using Box AI to automatically pull relevant details from unstructured documents into Shelter’s system records.
2. Smarter underwriting workflows
On the underwriting side of the business, thousands of electronic transactions and physical checks come in each month related to homeowner insurance payments, which are sometimes (but not always) escrowed through mortgage companies. Because these payments take various forms and come from various places, right now, staff have to manually reconcile payments against the expected amounts in the system. Using Box as a content layer, and Box AI for intelligence, there’s real potential here to automate this “low-value task” so employees can instead focus on higher-value work.
3. Integration with insurance-specific software
Shelter uses three products from insurance-specific software platform Guidewire: ClaimCenter to manage the claims process, PolicyCenter to support underwriting and the policy administration lifecycle, and BillingCenter to handle billing and payment processing. Box has over 1,500 integrations, including integrations with Guidewire across all three of its products. Using Box APIs and Guidewire Cloud’s integration framework, Shelter has been able to build custom workflows to assist with billing and other tasks.
4. Fraud detection
Shelter can reimagine fraud-detection workflows, using AI-powered data extraction to apply structure to unstructured data in order to identify fraud in the form of edited pictures, for instance.
5. Knowledge management
By building team and project-specific portals on Box Hubs, Shelter can apply Box AI to build a smarter knowledge platform for adjusters, underwriters, and customer service reps, so people can always locate the information and documents they need quickly.
The transformation of the insurance industry with AI
Every insurance company will eventually be using AI to transform business processes, so taking a somewhat aggressive approach to Intelligent Content Management positions Shelter to stay ahead of its competitors. Schwartz emphasizes that Shelter is currently in “a unique — and good — spot” because they’re transforming core business processes right now. This gives them space to rethink how both generative AI (which creates new content) and agentic AI (which can act independently) fit into their future plans.
“I think this is an important area not just for insurance companies but for all verticals out there,” he says. Efficiency gains and cost savings are obvious benefits, but Schwartz warns, “You have to really look at ways you apply AI aligned with your business goals. Everyone thinks AI is about driving efficiencies — but even more importantly is the competitive advantage you get from AI specifically advancing agentic workflows.”
The value of Intelligent Content Management goes beyond individual lines of business. With the foundation Shelter has laid, they’re now reimagining how business workflows could run, with smarter automation helping people do better work every day while delivering faster, higher-quality service for customers.
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