For years, the insurance industry has been asking the same question: how can we accelerate digital transformation? AI, automation and new insurtech platforms have all promised to make underwriting more efficient, improve decision-making and create better experiences for brokers and customers. Yet despite significant investment, many insurers still struggle to realise the full value of these technologies.
I don't believe that's because the technology isn't ready. More often, it's because digital transformation has been treated as a technology project, when it's actually a people project.
Having worked for global insurers before moving into insurtech, I've seen both sides of this challenge. I've experienced the operational realities inside a carrier, and have worked with insurers looking to modernize the way they
That starts by asking the right questions. With AI dominating industry conversations, there is understandable pressure for insurers to demonstrate they are embracing the latest innovations.
When they don't, they risk creating exactly the opposite outcome. We've all seen examples where new technology sits alongside existing processes instead of replacing them, and employees can end up working across multiple systems, duplicating tasks or manually correcting automated outputs. AI cannot fix a broken process on its own, and if organizations simply bolt automation onto inefficient workflows, they automate the dysfunction rather than removing it. The insurers seeing the strongest returns are those that redesign their processes alongside implementing new technology, ensuring people and technology evolve together.
Alongside this shift in technology, another change is quietly reshaping the industry. Insurance is welcoming a new generation of professionals who have grown up with intuitive digital tools in every aspect of their lives. For many millennials and Gen Z employees, technology isn't viewed as an added benefit, but is simply the baseline expectation for how work should happen, and that mindset is having a profound impact.
Newer professionals are often far more willing to ask why a process remains manual, why information has to be entered multiple times or why underwriters spend valuable time on administration rather than making decisions. They don't necessarily have decades of insurance experience, but they do bring fresh perspectives on how work could be done differently.
Insurance has always been an industry that values experience, and rightly so, but that kind of generational pressure shouldn't be seen as disruptive. It's productive friction, encouraging legacy carriers to challenge long-standing assumptions instead of accepting that "this is how we've always done it."
Of course, none of this diminishes the importance of experience, and the industry's greatest strength has always been the judgement, commercial awareness and market knowledge developed over years of underwriting complex risks. Experienced professionals recognize nuances that technology cannot. They understand broker relationships, appreciate market context and know when exceptions need to be made. Those qualities remain essential, regardless of how sophisticated AI becomes.
The most successful insurers therefore avoid framing transformation as a choice between experience and technology. Instead, they combine the technical confidence of newer employees with the judgement of experienced colleagues.
I've seen the best results come from teams where people comfortable experimenting with new tools work alongside those who understand where the real complexity and risk sits. One group naturally asks, "Could this process work differently?" The other asks, "How do we make sure we don't lose the judgement that makes underwriting effective?" This shouldn't be viewed as a changing of the guard. It should be viewed as an opportunity for knowledge transfer in both directions.
Experienced professionals pass on underwriting expertise, commercial judgement and an understanding of customer and broker relationships, whilst newer employees help build confidence in emerging technologies, challenge outdated ways of working and encourage greater digital adoption. Together, they create better processes, better technology and ultimately better underwriting outcomes.
Ultimately, digital transformation isn't measured by how many AI tools an insurer deploys. It's measured by whether those tools genuinely improve the way people work. The insurers that will lead over the next decade won't simply be those investing most heavily in AI. They'll be the organizations that recognize technology and culture must evolve together. When insurers combine fresh thinking with decades of experience, AI becomes far more than another technology investment. It becomes a catalyst for changing how the entire organization works.
