Pasito’s Pauline Roteta on How AI Helps Brokers Grow

A lot of the conversation about AI in benefits centers on how much work it can take off someone’s plate.

During my conversation with Pauline Roteta, Founder and CEO of Pasito, I kept coming back to what brokers could do with that time.

Most firms have opportunities they struggle to pursue while keeping up with renewals and open enrollment. There are clients they cannot efficiently serve and advisory conversations that get pushed aside by the daily workload.

Pauline sees AI creating space for that expansion. And she believes established brokerages are well positioned to take advantage, provided they start changing how they work.

An Employee Problem Led to a Brokerage Platform

Pauline’s path into benefits started at BlackRock, where she worked in private equity. She became a certified financial planner hoping to do pro bono work and found herself drawn to the financial decisions people make through their employers.

“Where you work so deeply affects your financial health and the financial health of your family.”

Pasito initially focused on helping employees make better benefits decisions. Getting that product running exposed the team to the operational challenges underneath it.

Sensitive information arrived in spreadsheets. Plan details lived in lengthy PDFs. Supporting each employer required substantial manual work to understand coverage and eligibility.

The team began using AI to handle some of that work internally, including reading carrier proposals and preparing employee communications. Those capabilities eventually became tools that brokerages and carriers could use themselves.

That history helps explain Pasito’s approach. The company built around the information shared across the benefits ecosystem, giving it a foundation for connecting work that often happens in separate systems.

The Starting Point Is the Work Consuming the Day

Pauline pointed to two areas where account managers spend a tremendous amount of time: preparing proposals and executing enrollment.

During proposal season, teams collect carrier responses, compare plans, and assemble client presentations. Once decisions are made, they turn those details into benefit guides and enrollment materials.

Every time someone recreates the same information in another document, there is another opportunity for an error.

Pasito’s opportunity is to automate that repetitive work while keeping the underlying information connected.

Over time, Pauline sees those workflows extending further. Information from a proposal can flow into employee education, then support an agent answering benefits questions throughout the year. What employees ask could help inform the next renewal.

But firms need experience with the earlier steps before they can confidently connect the entire process.

“You gotta start somewhere and start building that muscle as an organization.”

That is where her sense of urgency comes from. Teams that start adopting AI develop the experience to take on more ambitious projects. Waiting also delays that learning.

What $2 Million in New Commissions Looks Like

The clearest example came from a brokerage that wanted to enter the PEO market.

Servicing that business meant supporting thousands of employer groups. Creating benefit guides and microsites at that scale was beyond what the team could reasonably handle manually.

According to Pauline, applying AI to that operation enabled the brokerage to bring in more than $2 million in commissions.

That example makes the growth opportunity easier to picture. A market the firm wanted to enter became operationally achievable.

The same thinking could apply to a midmarket brokerage building a scalable small-group practice. Another firm might use the capacity to pursue larger employers or make it easier to introduce additional coverage to existing clients.

Pauline’s optimism extends to incumbent firms because they already have client relationships and understand the work. They can build on those strengths as their operating capacity changes.

More Room for the Advisory Work Clients Need

The part of the conversation that excited me most was what this could mean for the broker’s advisory role.

I hear from brokers who have ideas for helping clients contain costs but struggle to find the time to work through them. Some strategies require deeper conversations or changes that feel difficult to execute during an already busy year.

Pauline sees an opportunity to make that consulting more consistent, including for smaller employers that often receive a more transactional experience.

“How do we come up with real solutions that can bend the cost curve?”

Freeing up time creates room to work on that question. Turning it into better service still requires a deliberate decision about where the team’s attention goes.

That is the opportunity I left thinking about: a brokerage with the capacity to act on ideas it has been putting off.

For firms starting to adopt AI, deciding what to do with that capacity deserves attention now.