Parts of Progressive’s year-end earnings call early this month sounded a bit like Lemonade’s Investor Day last year—with both focused on how automation supports growth without adding people.
Executive Summary
This article is part of four-part series about personal lines insurer strategies for growth in 2025. Additional articles in the series are:In November last year, Lemonade had described a culture built on technology—in which Lemonade “makers” (employees) have no fear of AI taking over tasks they handle at any point in time—and displayed graphs of in force premiums steadily climbing while the employee count remained flat.
Related article: Hiring for Attitude: What Sets Lemonade Apart
At Progressive, employee counts continue to grow sharply, John Murphy, Progressive’s president of claims, and Matt White, business leader for claims data and analytics, said during an earnings call earlier this month. They showed that headcount more than doubled in the past decade—to more than 65,000 in 2024 from less than 30,000 in 2014. But that paled in comparison to policy count growth.
