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  • Insurers pivot AI strategy toward core risk underwriting

    AI investments by insurers are now expected to generate tangible business value beyond mere efficiency.

    According to findings in the 2026 Evident AI Index, insurers are now embedding AI technologies into workflows that directly influence underwriting discipline and capital allocation.

    Christian Preece, Insurance Director at Evident, says: “For years, insurers have competed on AI ambition, but now the focus is shifting from what insurers are building to the value they’re creating. In itself, it’s a sign of AI maturity to have the internal capability to measure these figures and be confident enough to disclose them.

    “As the first industry leaders disclose hard return on investment data, they’re providing the kind of evidence that shareholders and boards have been looking for in light of increasing concerns around the costs of AI, and we can expect to see more insurers going public in the coming year.”

    While the broader insurance workforce experienced a contraction of 2.2 percent over the past year, the AI-specialist headcount expanded by 32 percent across the 30 insurers tracked in the report. This personnel shift highlights a transition from building data foundations to the integration and optimisation of business-specific AI use cases.

    Data engineering remains a component of this investment, yet its relative share of the talent stack is declining as roles focused on AI development and software implementation gain priority. AI specialists now represent one in every 50 employees at insurers included in the Index.

    Executive structures are also adapting to these requirements. Nearly 40 percent of the insurers indexed now designate a senior leader with explicit responsibility for AI. Most of these appointments occurred within the last 12 months, creating a new level of executive oversight for AI-driven growth.

    This governance is vital as firms shift from isolated point solutions toward agentic AI systems that coordinate actions across multiple stages of the policy administration and claims lifecycle. Notably, the adoption of agentic AI has surged, with one in four newly disclosed use cases now showing evidence of agentic orchestration, compared to one in twenty only six months prior.

    Zurich sets an example

    Zurich serves as an example of this transition, rising from 12th position to 4th in the global rankings by emphasising a shared platform model over decentralised experimentation.

    The insurance giant deployed ZurichIQ, a modular generative AI platform integrated into underwriting, claims, legal, and service operations. This architecture provides a unified environment for various functional tools, such as PolicyIQ for contract comparisons and GuidelinelQ for enforcing underwriting standards.

    Hurdles in such deployments typically involve maintaining oversight across diverse business lines. Zurich manages these risks through a dedicated committee that governs AI investment and model risk management. The platform approach allows the insurer to push AI capabilities into daily production while maintaining a consistent governance framework, which is reinforced by internal training programs like the £1.3m AI apprenticeship initiative.

    Ericson Chan, Group Chief Information & Digital Officer at Zurich, said: “Being recognised as the biggest AI growth insurer in the Evident AI Index is not simply a reflection of technology adoption; it signals a broader transformation from use cases to enterprise-wide execution and change.

    “This recognition reinforces our conviction in our AI360 strategy, embedding intelligence into workflows, decisions, and customer outcomes across the value chain. AI is no longer a technology initiative. It is becoming Zurich’s operating system.”

    Focus on risk selection and ROI

    With claims typically accounting for 60 to 80 percent of premium income, even minor improvements in fraud detection and risk selection produce a disproportionate financial impact compared to general administrative cost reduction.

    Insurers are now directing venture capital and internal innovation efforts toward data sources that enable more dynamic analysis of climate volatility and cyber threats. A critical marker of this maturity is the ability to quantify and disclose financial returns.

    Manulife, Generali, and Intact Financial have led this effort, publicly reporting AI-driven value. Projections indicate these three firms will generate over $1 billion in AI-driven value by the end of their respective reporting periods. This transparency provides the hard data shareholders demand regarding the costs of AI deployment, effectively mandating more rigorous performance measurement across the sector.

    Success in the next phase of industry adoption depends on the ability to translate these technical investments into better underwriting results. Market leaders Allianz (which now holds the largest AI talent pool in the industry and has registered 900 AI use cases worldwide) and AXA maintain top positions by demonstrating sustained investment across innovation, talent, and transparency pillars.

    Barbara Karuth-Zelle, Member of the Board of Management and Group COO at Allianz, commented: “AI didn’t change our ambition. It accelerates how we deliver on it at scale.

    “Behind this ranking are thousands of moments: a claim processed faster, a customer experience reimagined, a partner better connected, a colleague freed up for what truly matters. And we are determined to keep going—an inspiring, transformative journey.”

    See also: Accenture: Consumers show growing trust in AI shopping agents

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  • Aviva deploys AI to stop £230M in sophisticated insurance fraud

    Aviva has uncovered a record £230 million in insurance fraud claims and is using AI tools to counter the growing problem.

    The battleground has changed, and the culprits are also coming armed with a new generation of tools. We’re now in an environment where AI is being used not just to defend against fraud, but to perpetrate it.

    The insurance industry has long dealt with opportunistic dishonesty. A bumped car suddenly needs four new doors, or a minor slip becomes a life-altering injury. However, according to Aviva’s data, the nature of the deception is getting deeper, more sophisticated, and harder for the human eye to catch.

    Aviva is fighting fire with fire, deploying its own AI to uncover these elaborate schemes.

    Countering the AI-powered insurance fraud factories

    Aviva reports that scammers are now using AI to generate convincing fakes of car accident scenes. These aren’t clumsy photoshop jobs; they’re detailed, plausible images that can easily fool a claims handler working through a heavy caseload.

    The same generative AI tools are being used to create fake documents, from invoices for repairs that were never done, to medical reports that have no basis in fact. Fraudsters don’t need access to a network of corrupt garages or medical professionals to back up their story. They just need a subscription to an AI service and a bit of imagination. The AI handles the rest, producing official-looking documents that can pass a cursory inspection.

    An individual or small group can now generate the supporting evidence for dozens of high-value claims without ever leaving their desk. How do you validate reality when reality itself can be so easily and cheaply faked?

    Aviva’s response has been to build an AI-powered defence system that can operate at the same scale and speed as the threat. While the company is understandably tight-lipped about the exact architecture, you can piece together what a system like this needs to do.

    At its core, the AI detective carries out pattern recognition at scale. The AI sifts through millions of data points from current and past claims, learning what a legitimate claim looks like—and, more importantly, what it doesn’t.

    When a new claim comes in, the system is cross-referencing everything. Does the damage in the photo match the physics of the described accident? Do the timestamps on the documents make sense? Has this vehicle registration number appeared in other suspicious claims? Are the repair costs quoted on the invoice out of line with the thousands of other similar repairs in the database? It’s a level of forensic analysis that would be impossible to perform manually on every one of the thousands of claims filed each day.

    From organised crime to exaggerated claims

    It’s important to note that this isn’t all about organised criminal gangs. A portion of that £230 million figure comes from what the industry calls “claims inflation.”

    Claims inflation is the more common fraud where policyholders or service providers pad the bill. For instance, a garage might add unnecessary repairs to a quote, or an individual might exaggerate the value of items stolen in a burglary.

    Here, too, AI is proving to be a heavy-duty tool. By analysing vast datasets of repair costs and market values, the system can instantly flag when a quoted price is an outlier. It can compare the cost of a replacement part from one garage against the average from hundreds of others in the same region for the same make and model.

    The goal of Aviva’s AI isn’t to outright deny claims, it’s an augmentation tool for their human investigators. The AI acts as a filter, sifting through the noise to surface the most likely instances of fraud. This human-in-the-loop approach is essential for ensuring fairness and preventing the system from becoming a black box that makes decisions without oversight.

    What Aviva is doing provides a potential route for any customer-facing enterprise in the age of generative AI. The same technology that creates these threats is also the most effective way to combat them.

    As it becomes easier to fake everything from identities to invoices, the only viable defence is an intelligent system that can learn, adapt, and spot deception at a scale that humans alone can’t match.

    See also: Weis Markets adds Instacart AI-powered shopping carts to stores

    Banner for AI & Big Data Expo by TechEx events.

    Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and is co-located with other leading technology events including the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo. Click here for more information.

    AI News is powered by TechForge Media. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.

    The post Aviva deploys AI to stop £230M in sophisticated insurance fraud appeared first on AI News.