AI Foundations
The fundamentals of AI for insurance and risk professionals, and where AI creates insurable exposure. Learn what these systems actually do, the ways they fail, and how those failures land in a policy, so you can spot AI risk before it reaches a claim.
Read an AI risk the way it will read on a policy
AI Foundations is for insurance and risk professionals who keep meeting AI in submissions, contracts and claims without a working model of how it behaves. It builds that model from the ground up, in plain terms, and ties each idea back to cover.
- Explain in plain terms what an AI system does, the difference between traditional software and a model that learns, and why that difference matters for risk.
- Name the common ways AI systems fail, from biased outputs to hallucinated answers to model drift, and describe the loss each one can cause.
- Trace an AI failure through to the line of business it lands on, whether that is professional liability, cyber, general liability or a silent gap between them.
- Ask an insured the right first questions about how they build, buy and govern AI, and know when a risk needs a specialist review.
Six lessons, about six hours
Self-paced and on demand. Each lesson ends with a short knowledge check; a final assessment, earns the certificate of completion.
01 What AI actually is
The vocabulary without the hype: models, training data, inference and the line between rules-based software and systems that learn from examples.
02 Machine learning and generative AI, side by side
How predictive models and large language models differ in what they do and how they go wrong, using examples an underwriter will recognise.
03 How AI systems fail
Bias, hallucination, model drift, data poisoning and automation error: what each failure looks like and the harm it can cause an insured or a third party.
04 Where AI creates insurable exposure
Mapping AI failures onto lines of business: professional liability, cyber, general liability and product, and the silent gaps where none of them clearly respond.
05 Governance, regulation and the AI supply chain
How responsibility moves between model builders, vendors and deployers, and what emerging rules such as the EU AI Act mean for the risks you write.
06 Asking an insured about AI
The first questions to put to a client about how they build, buy and control AI, and the final assessment that earns your certificate of completion.
Built for the desk that keeps meeting AI in the risk
You do not need a technical background and you do not need to code. AI Foundations assumes an insurance or risk role and builds the AI understanding from there, so you can talk about these systems with clients and colleagues without guessing.
Underwriters
You are seeing AI in submissions and want a grounded view of the exposure before you price or decline it.
Brokers and account teams
Your clients are adopting AI fast and asking whether they are covered. You want to answer without hedging.
Claims and risk managers
You need to recognise an AI-driven loss when it lands and reason about which cover should respond.
One core course in a larger certification
AI Foundations is one of the 4 core courses that make up the CAIIP certification, the Certified AI Insurance Practitioner. Complete all of them, choose one specialization, and pass the proctored exam to become certified. CAIIP is coming 2026.
AI Foundations
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View courseAI Risk in Motor and Autonomous Systems
View courseAbout this certificate course
No. AI Foundations is a certificate course, which is shorter than a certification. You earn a certificate of completion, not a certification credential.
There is a final assessment. Each lesson has a short knowledge check along the way, and the final assessment confirms you are ready for the certificate of completion.
No. It is a one-off purchase. There is no renewal and no maintenance fee. Your certificate of completion does not expire.
Yes. AI Foundations is one of the four core courses of the CAIIP certification, the Certified AI Insurance Practitioner, which is coming in 2026. Taking it on its own still earns the standalone certificate of completion.
No. The course assumes an insurance or risk role and no coding. It explains AI in plain terms and always ties it back to exposure and cover.
Understand AI before it reaches a claim
About six hours to a working grounding in AI and where it creates insurable exposure. A certificate course, and a CAIIP core course.