I’ve been coming to RIMS Riskworld for many years, and every conference reflects where the industry is at that moment.  

RIMS, the risk management society®, has been a cornerstone of our profession for 75 years — bringing together a global community of over 200,000 risk practitioners across 80 chapters. RISKWORLD, their flagship annual event, is the largest gathering of its kind, and this year’s in Chicago brought together close to 12,000 professionals from more than 75 countries.

This year, RIMS RISKWORLD 2025 in Chicago marked a real shift — not just in attendance (which hit record levels), but in the kinds of conversations people were having.  

As someone who’s spent the bulk of his career in insurance — and much of it focused on helping claims teams work more efficiently — here are five things that stood out to me at this year’s event.

1. AI Is Starting to Deliver on Its Promises

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a recurring theme at RIMS over the years, but 2025 felt different. One thing I noticed right away: AI was everywhere. It didn’t matter if you were walking the expo floor, grabbing a coffee, or catching a session — conversations kept coming back to how AI is showing up in risk and claims.

This wasn’t just vendors pitching “what could be.” This year, I heard more practical conversations about how AI is actually being used in claims workflows — particularly in document review and litigation support.

It wasn’t just hype — there was real interest in how AI might fit into day-to-day workflows. But it wasn’t blind enthusiasm either. Most of the folks I spoke with were somewhere in the middle: they know things need to evolve, and they’re open to what AI could offer, but there’s still a healthy dose of skepticism. Can it really handle the complexity of a real claim? Can we trust the output? That tension — between the drive to modernize and the caution to get it right — was front and center. And it’s a shift from past years, where AI felt more like a buzzword than a real option on the table.

At Wisedocs, we’re focused on AI-powered claim documentation review, so it was encouraging to see more people thinking about how AI fits into their operations — not as a silver bullet, but as a tool to make claims handling more efficient. That “how” mindset is a shift from past years.

2. Claims Teams Are Under More Pressure

It’s no secret: claims departments are being asked to do more with less. Rising claim volumes, staffing challenges, growing compliance demands — it’s a lot to manage. And based on what I heard in breakout sessions and hallway chats, it’s not easing up anytime soon.

That’s why I noticed such strong interest in workflow automation and data tools — especially the kind that help speed up intake, organize documentation, and provide adjusters with the right information at the right time.

Whether it’s intelligent character recognition (ICR), summary generation, or structured reporting, people are looking for ways to lighten the manual load without losing control of the process. At Wisedocs, we’ve seen firsthand how time saved on document review can ripple through the entire lifecycle of a claim.

3. Medical Records Are Still a Challenge

Even with all the technology we’ve added in the last decade, medical records continue to be one of the most time-consuming and frustrating parts of the job — especially in workers’ comp, auto, and liability claims.

Folks talked about how long it still takes to find key information in a file — and how difficult it can be to ensure consistency across case teams. This matched what we hear from our clients all the time: it’s not that adjusters don’t know what they’re looking for — it’s that they’re buried in documents that weren’t designed to be reviewed at speed.

AI tools can help, but only if they’re trained to handle real-world messiness — handwritten notes, incomplete files, inconsistent formats. That’s where solutions that include an expert human review layer become especially valuable.

4. Compliance and Documentation Are Front and Center

Another trend I noticed was the heightened focus on auditability and compliance, particularly around new tech. As AI gets more involved in claims and underwriting, there’s more scrutiny from regulators and legal teams — and that’s pushing organizations to think carefully about how their tools work, and how they explain decisions.

A documentation standard for AI-driven tools seems to be emerging: if you can’t trace the output back to a verifiable source, you’re going to run into problems. At Wisedocs, we’ve been thinking about this for a while, so it was reassuring to hear others in the industry raising the same concerns and looking for more transparency in their tools.

The ability to show your work — and stand by it — is becoming a baseline expectation.

5. The Talent Pipeline Still Needs Work

Finally, one personal observation. This year’s crowd, while experienced and engaged, skewed older. And that tracks with what we’re seeing across the industry: a lot of experienced professionals, but not as many younger folks entering the claims side of the business.

That’s a concern, especially given how complex the claims process is becoming — and how stretched many teams already are. The day-to-day workload can be overwhelming, with a lot of time spent just finding the right information. That’s where smart tools come in. By organizing unstructured data and surfacing the key details quickly and accurately, we can take some of that manual burden off their plate. It’s not about replacing expertise — it’s about giving professionals what they need to make objective, defensible decisions more efficiently.

AI and automation aren’t just about efficiency — they’re about supporting the next generation of claims professionals as they get up to speed.

Final Thoughts

If there was one takeaway from RISKWORLD 2025, it’s that AI is no longer on the sidelines — it’s becoming a real part of the conversation in claims. Not just in theory, but in practical ways that teams are beginning to adopt and apply.

But as we move forward, it’s clear that trust in AI requires more than speed or automation — it requires expert human oversight. Having professionals involved in how models are trained and how outputs are validated isn’t just about improving accuracy — it’s about reducing risk, ensuring compliance, and making sure decisions are defensible. That oversight is what turns AI from a tool into a reliable partner in the claims process.

There’s still work ahead, but the momentum is real. And I left Chicago feeling optimistic — and proud of how Wisedocs is helping claims teams strike the right balance between efficiency, trust, and risk mitigation as they navigate what’s next.