Briefing Overview

  • The second annual report released by industry research firm Evident Insightson the insurance industry's AI indexfound that insurers' confidence in applying AI is growing as companies mature in AI investment and integration. The firm tracks AI deployment and activity, talent, and leadership performance across the 30 largest insurers in North America and Europe.
  • The Evident report notes that talent is key to success. As project focus shifts from large-scale data pipeline construction to AI integration and optimization across individual business lines, insurers are increasingly favoring external hiring over internal talent development programs.
  • Claims management, internal process operations, underwriting, pricing, and customer engagement rank among the top AI use cases, with three-quarters of respondents citing productivity gains as the most common positive outcome. "The AI race in insurance is no longer about whether companies invest—most do—but whether those investments translate into sustained competitive advantage and commercial value," said the report's co-authors.

Deep Insights

Insurers, likemost enterprises,want to link AI investments to measurable financial value. According to a report released inApril by agentic AI platform Simplifai,more than four-fifths of companies in the industry invest at least $5 million annually in AI, with 14% investing over $50 million.

Evident found that talent, innovation, leadership, and transparency have the greatest impact on success.

Although AI adoption across industries often focuses on overall productivity and time savings, insurers can unlock value through more targeted approaches. Small improvements in risk selection, underwriting, and claims adjustment have a far greater financial impact than efficiency gains—up to 80% of the industry's revenue comes from claims processing.

According to the research, productivity does not fully reflect AI maturity.

"The more strategic test is whether AI helps insurers select better risks, price more accurately, manage claims more effectively, allocate capital more intelligently, and adapt more quickly when markets shift," said the report's co-authors.

As investment strategies evolve, insurers' talent needs are also changing, with core roles shifting toward orchestrating andmanaging AI outcomes.。

Over the past year, insurers have shifted toward AI development and AI software implementation skills. Data engineering roles—typically in high demand during the early and mid-stages of infrastructure modernization projects—are shrinking,especially in organizations building foundational capabilities from scratch.

As companies advance longer-term AI projects, how they use these tools will affect their productivity. Evident links insurers' productivity gains to three changes: moving from task-based AI to agentic applications; use cases that improve underwriting, pricing, and claims outcomes; and shifting from point solutions to connected workflows.

"The most advanced insurers are therefore advancing on two tracks," said the report's co-authors. "They are deploying AI in areas that create measurable value while investing in the less visible infrastructure needed to support broader integration over the long term."