Dive Brief:
- Most insurance firms are struggling to reap results from their generative AI initiatives as they look to the technology to cut costs and improve processes, according to an April report from agentic AI platform Simplifai. The report is based on industry data from McKinsey, EY, Deloitte and others.
- More than four in five insurance companies dedicate at least $5 million annually to AI, with 14% spending more than $50 million. However, finance teams are unable to tie AI investments to returns, which keeps projects in the pilot phase. Meanwhile, challenging legal environments and complex legacy platforms also stand in the way of AI moving into transformative production, the report said.
- “Most carriers have AI projects,” according to the report, authored by Simplifai CEO Artem Gonchakov. “Few have an AI strategy. The difference determines whether AI produces scattered productivity gains or compounding competitive advantages.”
Dive Insight:
Determining AI ROI is proving to be a challenge across industries as insurers, retailers, financial institutions and others evaluate how their investments are paying off.
U.S. tech leaders plan to spend $207 million on AI in the next 12 months, nearly double the amount from last year, according to a survey of tech executives conducted by KPMG. While nearly two-thirds of companies reported that their AI investments delivered meaningful business value, only a few are scaling the technology fast enough to drive ROI, according to KPMG.
Misalignment on the definition of ROI between C-suite executives and tech workers is also causing enterprise confusion on the role of the technology, according to TE Connectivity’s 2026 Industrial Technology Index. Only 19% of executives reported having “full clarity” on AI ROI, the report found.
In the insurance industry, fewer than half of businesses have deployed AI in a single function, with production-scale deployments remaining rare, according to Simplifai. AI use cases in insurance tend to focus on customer service chatbots and document summarization, the report found.
End-to-end workflow automation in underwriting or claims is the least common deployment, according to Simplifai.
“The pattern is consistent across carriers,” the report said. “Lots of pilots, limited production, minimal P&L impact.”
Agentic AI stands to reshape the narrative around AI returns, as more than three in five IT decision-makers anticipate agents will eventually yield more than 100% ROI, according to PagerDuty. Nearly 45% of IT executives believe agentic AI will have a greater impact than generative AI.
Insurance companies deploying agentic AI into workflows reported between 30% and 40% productivity gains in claims and underwriting operations, according to Simplifai.
“The difference isn’t technological access, every carrier can buy the same models and platforms,” the report said. “The difference is approach: workflow-first deployment with governance built in versus model-first pilots with integration as an afterthought.”
