Read up on September's leading AI and insurance stories driving industry momentum, regulatory progress, and business change.
Latest Articles as of September 24
News: More businesses are buying cyber insurance than ever
The brief: Seventy percent of businesses now buy cyber insurance, the highest share since the Travelers Risk Index turned cyber-focused in 2018. Cyber threats ranked as the top business concern for the fifth time in eight years, with 58% of the 1,202 US business insurance decision makers surveyed worried about cyber risk and 55% concerned about a breach involving AI. The survey also found a governance gap, as 89% use AI in day-to-day operations but only 59% have developed practices for employees' use of it. Travelers found 92% of respondents are confident in carriers as a source of cybersecurity expertise, and Travelers said businesses are increasingly turning to their insurer for guidance.
News: Insurers ramp up AI investment as governance becomes the edge
The brief: Insurers and reinsurers plan to more than double their AI spending over the next three years, S&P Global Ratings found in a survey of 121 businesses. The median respondent expects efficiency gains of 6% to 7% and revenue improvements of 4% to 5% by 2028. S&P notes, however, that AI has not yet materially affected profitability, and 83% of respondents say they are in the early or intermediate stages of adoption. S&P reads the focus on governance as a signal of industry maturity, with nearly all respondents building AI governance frameworks and almost two-thirds keeping AI model inventories. The agency expects the ability to scale AI with strong governance and risk controls to increasingly shape competitive advantage and, ultimately, creditworthiness.
News: Major cyber carriers stand behind cover for AI-related incidents
The brief: Beazley confirmed it will provide AI-affirmative cyber cover, meaning it will pay for losses from an incident even if the attacker used AI. QBE's global head of cyber said the insurer continues to support coverage for AI-related claims and treats AI as a risk amplifier rather than a fundamentally new cyber risk. AIG said it is not seeking to use the GenAI exclusions in ISO's general liability update at this time, and Zurich subsidiary, Boxx, has added cover for AI-driven social engineering attacks. The positions follow a Rand report that found the industry had largely stayed silent on AI risk, leaving policyholders unsure whether losses would be covered.
News: White House plans a new federal AI oversight unit
The brief: President Trump announced plans to create an "AI Force" modeled on the Space Force and to name a new AI czar, while pledging the government would not hinder or stifle the industry's growth. His post said the administration would police bad behavior through the existing criminal and civil justice system, though he offered few details on the unit's role, budget, or placement. Axios reads the move as a doubling down on the White House's limited-regulation approach, even as the heads of Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Google DeepMind have called for slowing AI development. Democrats have increasingly called for intervention but have not united around a single AI agenda.
News: Reinsurance buyers say AI isn't reshaping cyber purchases yet
The brief: About 72% of respondents to Moody's Ratings 2027 reinsurance buyers survey expect accelerated AI use to have little or no impact on their cyber reinsurance decisions over the next year, though Moody's expects AI to significantly affect the line longer term. Demand looks stable, with 74% planning to buy the same amount of cover and just over a quarter aiming to buy more, while almost half expect low to mid-single-digit price declines. Moody's also noted a growing number of primary insurers shifting from quota share to excess of loss covers as they grow more confident managing attritional cyber losses. At Munich Re's Monte Carlo briefing, a board member said the industry has not done enough to close the cyber protection gap, pointing to significant growth opportunity.
News: Plaintiff firms bring AI and big data to trial
The brief: A growing number of injury and claims law firms now test arguments on online mock juries, mine big data to pick jurors and venues, and use AI to analyze trial arguments, insurers and defense lawyers told Insurance Journal. eMaxx Assurance's CEO said insurers' real competition is now plaintiffs' lawyers. Marathon Strategies data shows nuclear verdicts of at least $10 million rose 41% from 2024 to 2025. An insurance lawyer, from one of the largest U.S. insurance defense firms, said carriers could face a strategic disadvantage at jury selection if defense counsel sticks to traditional methods. A national managing partner for Lewis Brisbois said more carriers are buying into data and AI in litigation and urged insurers and defense firms to invest in the approach.
Latest Articles as of September 17
News: Wholesale automation reshapes the underwriter training path
The brief: Jimcor Agencies, an independent MGA and wholesale brokerage, is automating the slowest parts of wholesale insurance, including submission intake, data entry, and carrier routing, starting with OCR and PDF scraping before moving to Copilot integrations and proprietary tools. Chief growth officer, Kristen Skender, told Insurance Business the harder question is what happens to the entry-level work where new underwriters and brokers learn the trade. As automation absorbs clearance and triage, Jimcor is cross-training those associates for higher-expertise work rather than cutting roles. Skender said complex placements like layered casualty and excess property will need a human touch longer than smaller transactional accounts.
News: Consumers want a human agent who also uses AI
The brief: A survey commissioned by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America found 87% of consumers say a human agent matters when making insurance decisions, and only 6% are comfortable relying on AI alone. At the same time, 61% would prefer an agent who uses AI to tailor coverage and speed things up, and 67% were positive about AI to identify coverage gaps and answer questions faster. Big "I" president, Charles Symington, said AI can speed the process but cannot replace an agent's market access, product knowledge, and long-term relationships. Trusted Choice's Kevin Brandt framed it as consumers expecting speed and personal service together, not one or the other.
News: New index scores where carriers capture AI value
The brief: Consulting firm Baringa has built an AI Value and Maturity Index that assesses AI across 47 steps of the insurance lifecycle, spanning marketing, application, underwriting, policy and onboarding, claims and renewals, and servicing. One of the firm's partner described it as a conversation starter to help carriers see how far their capabilities have advanced against peers across the value chain. The partner said the industry sees clear value in first notice of loss and fraud detection, while lower-perceived-value areas like document preparation and renewal may hold untapped opportunity. The partner cautioned that the index is a guide for prioritization, not a strategy or playbook, and that legacy systems and workforce resistance still shape what each carrier should pursue.
News: AI data centers push firms toward self-insurance
The brief: Captives, where firms set up their own in-house insurance rather than buy from traditional carriers, are becoming a go-to model for the physical risks around AI data centers, according to Marsh's Michael Serricchio. The facilities are often larger than anything traditional insurers have covered, and many sit in areas exposed to tornadoes, floods, and drought. AM Best says the roughly 150 US captives it rates generated more than $8 billion in savings over five years, and there are now over 6,000 captives globally writing about $240 billion in premiums. S&P noted specific gaps, including no obvious product for the high-value GPUs inside every data center and long waiting periods before business-interruption coverage responds to a power failure. Zurich's Adriana Scherzinger said the scale is unprecedented, with reinsurers, captives, catastrophe bonds, and sidecars all needed to supply capacity.
News: AI speeds admin but underwriters still own the call
The brief: A survey of 350 senior commercial P&C underwriters across the US and UK found 51% say AI's biggest contribution has been saving time on admin, while only 21% say it has improved decision quality. The blockers they name are context problems, including inconsistent submission data, pressure to bind quickly, and no view of how similar prior risks performed, and 73% preferred a live book signal over a report that refreshes automatically. Their sharpest worry is losing senior judgment without passing it on, yet coaching and knowledge transfer ranked last of ten investment priorities at 8%. Asked to describe an ideal setup, underwriters consistently wanted AI handling data, triage, and drafting while a person keeps complex risks and the final call. The report was run by Coleman Parkes and published by underwriting-software vendor hyperexponential, whose commercial interest the coverage flags.
News: SCOR puts AI into underwriting, warns on governance
The brief: At the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous, SCOR CEO, Thierry Léger, said the reinsurer is leaning fully into AI as both a tool and a source of risk, calling governance one of its biggest challenges as agentic systems begin to support underwriting decisions. SCOR already uses AI to power underwriting, including an AI-driven terrorism tool close to going live, and sets limits and frameworks for it as it would for any employee. Léger pointed to AI-related litigation rising sharply since 2022 and now spanning cyber and directors' and officers' lines, adding that this is just the beginning. He framed AI as a net opportunity taken with eyes wide open, citing an insurance protection gap he estimates at 80 to 95% of the non-physical world. P&C CEO, Jean-Paul Conoscente, said SCOR plans to apply AI to property catastrophe underwriting from 2027 to optimize capital deployment.
Latest Articles as of September 10
News: One in six farmers now uses generative AI
The brief: Roughly 17% of the world's farmers now use generative AI for farm-related tasks, making it one of agriculture's fastest-growing technologies, according to McKinsey's Global Farmer Insights 2026 report. Adoption is strongest in the Americas, where growers lean on AI for rapid agronomic advice as elevated input costs, unpredictable weather, and labor shortages make farm-level decisions harder. Other technologies lag, with robotics, electric machinery, and sustainability software each showing minimal on-farm penetration. The findings, drawn from 5,500 farmers across ten countries, point to a client base whose risk decisions are increasingly shaped by AI, a signal worth watching for crop and agribusiness underwriters.
News: Insurers see real AI revenue gains but most leave value on the table
The brief: More than four in five insurers (81%) report real revenue gains from AI, achieving at least a 5% lift in gross written premiums through better pricing, personalization, and cross-selling, according to Accenture's new report on deploying AI with intent. Yet only 23% have reached true enterprise-wide integration, with capability still concentrated in specialist teams rather than embedded across functions. Accenture found 68% of insurers expect AI agents to transform core workflows, and 57% of employees already work with them regularly. Legacy integration and data quality remain the top barriers to scaling. Accenture frames formal AI governance, now in place at 56% of respondents, as a competitive advantage rather than a compliance cost.
News: The AI advantage shifts from building models to deploying them
The brief: AI lets insurers build and validate a pricing model in hours, but turning that output into a live price can still take months, according to an analysis-citing Earnix director. Data access, validation, approvals, and governance sit between a finished model and a market-ready price, so a faster model does not make a faster insurer. Earnix's 2026 industry report, surveying 400 executives, found only 30% can quickly access the information they need to make decisions, and two-thirds cite poor data quality as a barrier. The piece argues actuarial advantage is shifting from building strong models toward deploying, governing, and explaining them efficiently.
News: AXA moves AI from pilots into everyday operations
The brief: AXA has moved AI from isolated pilots into internal production through a group-wide Global AI Hub, now live across five of its own business units, including AXA XL. Teams in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the UK are running applications spanning motor claims automation, customer email processing, and enterprise knowledge management on shared, standardized infrastructure built for internal use. Governance, compliance, and human oversight are built into the architecture from the start rather than added later, with cost management and AI-safety monitoring embedded across the lifecycle. The hub is vendor-agnostic and supports multiple large language models. AXA's group CTO and AI officer framed the priority as combining efficient AI with the governance a regulated business requires.
News: BCG urges insurers to surface AI exposures before writing more cover
The brief: Insurers can begin covering emerging AI risks before a mature claims history exists, but only if they can identify where exposures are accumulating first, a BCG managing director told Monte Carlo Today. BCG estimates that capital expenditure by the largest US tech firms topped $400 billion in 2025 and could exceed $800 billion in 2026, creating new property, liability, and business-interruption demand it calls a growth opportunity. The warning is to avoid repeating "silent cyber," where insurers discovered unpriced exposure only after losses hit. AI itself can help by analyzing portfolios to surface hidden concentrations, though BCG stresses that humans must stay in control of consequential decisions.
News: AI infrastructure could add $200bn in premiums by 2030
The brief: A new Swiss Re Institute report estimates that AI data centres and renewable-energy infrastructure could generate around $200 billion in premiums between 2026 and 2030, one of the biggest growth areas across insurance, reinsurance, and ILS. Swiss Re describes the buildout as part of a capex super-cycle, with the "physical economy" back in force. The firm cautions the same boom concentrates risk, as assets cluster in shared locations and depend on common infrastructure. Reinsurance is seen as key to providing capacity, with catastrophe bonds and sidecars playing a role in upper property layers exposed to earthquake, windstorm, or flood accumulation.
Latest Articles as of September 3
News: US pushes G20 to skip new AI rules
The brief: The US pressed G20 members on Tuesday to take a hands-off approach to AI regulation at a two-day innovation ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, co-hosted by Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, and tech adviser, Michael Kratsios. Kratsios urged countries to adopt "Carolina Principles," reserving new rules for novel considerations rather than treating AI as its own category, and said China had signed on. Elon Musk criticized the EU's tech regulations as inhibiting progress, while Mark Zuckerberg and Demis Hassabis were also slated to address the ministers by video. The push comes as the US races China for AI supremacy, with a UN panel recently warning that AI development is outpacing both scientific understanding and government policy.
News: Cyber premium holds steady as AI reshapes the threat picture
The brief: Global cyber insurance premium is on track to reach $16.4 billion in 2026, growing at a steady 5% annual clip since 2022, even as AI reshapes the threat landscape, according to Swiss Re's latest cyber reinsurance report. Rather than creating entirely new categories of loss, the report argues AI is amplifying cyber risks insurers already know, since AI models often fall within existing policy definitions of computer systems. Rates fell for a fourth year, though the size of the decline eased from about 13% in 2025 to 5% in 2026 globally. North America still holds two-thirds of global premium at $10.7 billion, but Swiss Re flagged a limit-adequacy problem, with large-corporate US buyers averaging $120 million in purchased limits against a claims database showing 10 losses a year exceed that benchmark.
News: AI reshapes how people shop for insurance
The brief: Nearly three in 10 auto and home insurance customers have already used AI to research coverage, shop for policies, service accounts, or better understand their policies, according to a recent JD Power study. Among those who used AI to research products and coverage, 37% changed their policy based on what they learned and 42% purchased a policy after using AI-assisted shopping tools. Customers were least comfortable using AI for claims and policy changes, where the stakes of an error are higher, and some who began with an AI tool ultimately contacted a human representative anyway. The findings point to agents shifting from information providers toward trusted advisors as AI absorbs more of the early research.
News: Fed and FSB deliver matching AI cyber warning within days
The brief: The Federal Reserve's Spring 2026 Financial Stability Report found 50% of surveyed market participants cited AI as a major risk to US financial stability, up sharply from 30% six months earlier. Days later, the Financial Stability Board Chair told G20 finance ministers that frontier AI's impact on cyber risk is the single most immediate threat to the global financial system, capable of changing the speed, scale, and economics of an attack given the sector's dependence on a small number of concentrated cloud and technology providers. Hartford's Adrien Robinson told Insurance Business that cyber rates look "a little disconnected" from the underlying risk trajectory.
News: AI chatbots skip market-share leaders when recommending insurers
The brief: A Q2 2026 Insurance AIVI Benchmark ran 300 consumer-style insurance shopping prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Claude, generating 1,500 responses with 4,328 organic mentions of 134 insurance brands. GEICO led in auto, State Farm in home and renters, MassMutual in life, and The Hartford in commercial. The central finding is that being mentioned and being recommended are different measures, with The Hartford appearing in the top three at an 88.1% rate but earning an active recommendation in only 27.6% of those appearances, the lowest among the top ten brands. Market share offered little predictive value for AI visibility, with Amica's share of AI-generated home-insurance visibility running 10.8 times higher than its NAIC-reported market share.
News: Clinical AI could become a malpractice defense asset
The brief: The CEO of a medical malpractice insurtech told Insurance Business that no carrier can price AI risk with precision yet, since malpractice has a long reporting tail and clinical AI has only been in widespread use about two years. The CEO pointed to Waymo's published safety data, which shows 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than the human benchmark across 220.6 million rider-only miles, as the reason the CEO expects clinical AI to reduce medical error frequency rather than increase it. The CEO's advice to risk managers is to inventory every AI tool in clinical use, document clinical reasoning alongside tool outputs, and review vendor contracts for clinical-responsibility disclaimers before a claim arises.
