Charles Touché is Digital Innovation Officer at mShift, where he leads the partnerships and integrations that extend the mShift ecosystem. He joined in 2020 after seventeen years in commercial insurance — first as an underwriter, then across a decade at one of Arizona's largest retail brokerages.

He started at CNA Insurance as an underwriter, sitting on the carrier side of the risk. He then spent nine years at Lovitt & Touché, A Marsh & McLennan Agency, moving through marketing, analytics, and production before serving as Vice President. That path means he has priced a risk, marketed a submission, carried a book, and run a team — and he has done the manual work that mShift now automates.

That perspective shapes how he approaches technology. Commercial insurance runs on data that arrives late, incomplete, and in the wrong format. Charles's work is aimed at that problem from the outside in: identifying the data sources, technology platforms, and service capabilities that belong inside broker workflows, then getting them integrated where the work actually happens rather than bolted alongside it.

It shows up in what brokers can now reach inside the mShift Marketplace. Real-time data prefill and predictive intelligence run across email submission, storefronts, submission clearing, and bulk processing, so applications populate with structured data at the moment of submission rather than being assembled by hand afterward. Charles is also a visible presence in the Arizona and national insurance community, hosting brokers, MGAs, and carrier teams at the Phoenix office for working sessions on modern insurance operations.

Charles's starting point is that the insurance industry has made real progress, but the submission process is still far too manual. Too many teams still run on inboxes, spreadsheets, re-keying, and manual follow-up. He has done that work himself, which is why he treats it as a solvable problem rather than a permanent condition of the business.

His view is that better underwriting starts before the submission ever reaches the underwriter. Structured, enriched data arriving early changes decisions; the same data arriving late only gets reconciled. Technology should make systems easier to connect, not harder to replace — which is why he pushes for capability delivered inside the workflow a broker already uses, rather than asking anyone to trade how they work for a benefit that arrives later.

On AI he is direct: AI is not the strategy. The strategy is knowing where it fits, what friction it removes, and how it improves the way a business actually operates. Growth breaks down when operations cannot scale with it, and the point of every partnership and every integration is to give insurance professionals back their time and better information — without asking them to give up the relationships their business runs on.

Interested in discussing insurance technology, digital transformation, or partnership opportunities? Charles welcomes conversations with industry professionals.