Roots Automation is a company that brings together machine intelligence and human ingenuity in the form of advanced AI agents that read, reason, and infer like humans. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Roots Automation co-founder and CEO Chaz Perera to learn more about the company.
Chaz Perera’s Background
What is Chaz Perera’s background? Perera said:
“Before co-founding Roots Automation with our CTO, John Cottongim, I spent 14 years at AIG where I held executive roles in claims, operations and strategy – gaining expertise in driving operational excellence and digital transformation initiatives in the insurance industry.”
“The collective insights and experience garnered from my previous positions helped to shape Roots Automation’s unique approach to combining human ingenuity with machine intelligence.”
Formation Of Roots Automation
How did the idea for the company come together? Perera shared:
“Six years ago, Roots set out to solve the unstructured data problem that plagues insurers, third-party administrators (TPAs), brokers, and agents, preventing them from realizing the value of their investments in digital transformation.”
“The insurance sector has always been data-driven, with claims management and risk assessment/pricing largely dependent on data. Some of the data used in insurance is structured and organized into standardized formats, e.g., ACORD forms. However, over 80% of data used across the industry is unorganized and highly changeable, held within heaps of paper, email and faxes. This information is categorized as unstructured data.”
“Unstructured data pervades communications channels across critical decision-making documents, including exposure schedules, loss run reports, policy documents, underwriting supplements, legal demands and medical records. “
“Processing unstructured data encompasses up to 40% of the average working day.”
“On the underwriting side, receiving, accurately pricing, and responding to a submission faster than the competition improves the customer experience, which can make the difference between dramatic growth and a shrinking top line.”
“On the claims side, incorrectly capturing critical information incurs rework, can result in litigation, and can lead to overpayment of claims.”
“Many insurance organizations have tried using technology to transform unstructured, natural language information into structured data. However, most return to human power due to the inadequacies of the available technology.”
“As a result, Roots Automation was founded—to harness and unlock the value held within unstructured data and liberate people from manual data processing through advanced AI.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Perera reflected:
“It’s hard to pinpoint a single memory since my favorites revolve around seeing the Roots team solve challenging problems. So, I’m grateful for the people around the table trying to help insurance companies delight their policyholders. It’s also fulfilling to hear from our customers when they say they can head home on time each day or that they no longer get the “Sunday fuzzies” because they know our AI has taken care of all the work for them.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Perera explained:
“We have developed the state-of-the-art AI-powered Digital Coworker. Digital Coworkers leverage Roots’ proprietary generative AI, InsurGPT, the world’s most advanced generative AI for insurance, and the Roots Autonomous Workforce Platform, which empowers users to train, deploy and manage a digital workforce using natural language, to transform unstructured information into clear, actionable insights. This allows insurance leaders to make faster decisions with greater confidence.
Digital Coworkers are pre-trained on millions of insurance documents and include the knowledge, skills and capabilities to:
— Receive, classify, process and index insurance documents
— Reason and infer to make optimal, ethical and trustworthy decisions in the context of a business process or workflow
— Interact with buttons and data on a computer screen and transact data across business applications and systems
— Collaborate with people using natural language – able to be coached and trained to improve knowledge”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Perera and the team face in building the company? Perera acknowledged:
“The most important question customers ask is how their data and their clients’ data will be used and protected. We meet the most common standards: SOC 2 Type 2 and are compliant with ISO 27001, HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR. We also don’t learn about PFI, PHI, and PII. Ensuring that we are compliant with these as a start-up is challenging but something we understood was foundational to earn the trust of a highly regulated industry like insurance.”
“We adhere to eight principles that drive how we develop, deploy, and maintain our AI to ensure that we don’t lose sight of what matters most to our customers.”
Evolution Of Roots Automation’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Perera noted:
“We have continued to advance the technology in our proprietary AI, which regularly surpasses people-centric solutions and other AI solutions in accuracy, speed and trustworthiness.”
“By applying an industry vertical focus and training our AI on millions of non-public documents, our AI is furnished with the skills and knowledge of documents, systems, and workflows frequently found in insurance. As a result, it can make better decisions quicker, dramatically improving the speed to value for customers. With our proprietary AI and federated learning models, we ensure that we significantly refine the underlying AI’s speed, accuracy, and performance every day.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Perera cited:
— Founded in 2018
— Landed our first US customer in 2019
— First patent awarded in 2022 (for our novel approach to Human-in-the-Loop management)
— Landed our first international customer in 2023
— Crossed 100 employees in 2024
Customer Success Stories
When asking Perera about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Eastern Alliance (Eastern), a commercial carrier specializing in Workers Compensation, chose Roots to significantly improve processing speed with its Digital Coworker.”
“Eastern’s claims department had become overwhelmed by the heavy volume of highly variable (unstructured) incoming documents that needed to be analyzed, indexed and routed to the correct recipient in a timely manner to support Eastern’s claim-handling processes. Its mailroom team, the first team to interact with these documents, was handling all documents manually and struggled to manage the high volume of paperwork efficiently. After failing to achieve desired results with other technology vendors, Eastern deployed our Digital Coworker.”
“Eastern and Roots evaluated use cases across Eastern’s claims organization and identified document intake and indexing as a priority. After determining what was needed, the Digital Coworker, leveraging Roots’ InsurGPT, accurately and efficiently received, analyzed, processed and indexed priority five mail (the highest-volume mail) from five days down to one hour, representing a 100x improvement in processing speed. The Digital Coworker also bolstered accuracy by reducing the probability of human error, ensuring that documents were correctly indexed and easily retrievable. This enabled Eastern’s mailroom team to concentrate on more strategic, higher-value activities. Additionally, this empowered Eastern to focus on improvements to other business areas.”
“Leveraging Roots’ Digital Coworker has saved Eastern more than 2,700 total human hours since Q1 2023. “
Funding
When asking Perera about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“We closed a $22.2 million Series B funding round in September.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Perera assessed:
“We address the insurance market where unstructured data represents conservatively $100 billion in lost revenue.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Perera affirmed:
“Roots stands out with our vertical focus on the insurance space and deep AI expertise. The Roots leadership team brings over 100 years of deep insurance industry and AI skills, ensuring our solutions and products enable today’s top insurance brands to excel in their markets and concentrate on what matters most—delighting their clients with impeccable service and exceptional care.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Perera concluded:
“We plan to expand across all departments in our organization to support additional use-case coverage, new partner and channel programs, and customer acquisition in new regions (market expansion). We plan to further accelerate our AI development to increase our proprietary multi-modal capabilities and agentic models. As always, we want to continue delighting our customers with a keen focus on their success.”
