Travis MacMillian, president of the Americas at Xceedance, said that by 2026, insurance companies will move from experimenting with artificial intelligence to scaling it through human supervision, stronger governance and decision-making driven by real-time underwriting data.
Xceedance says 2026 will represent a decisive shift towards actionable artificial intelligence, real-time risk intelligence and participatory insurance models that will fundamentally reshape how insurance is underwritten, managed and experienced.
McMillian added: “The most successful insurers will combine human judgment with machine intelligence to underwrite smarter, leveraging AI to make underwriters more efficient, spend time on core risk decisions and build new partnerships with policyholders.”
With this in mind, the company identified several key technology trends expected to shape the insurance industry in 2026.
These include smarter, real-time underwriting powered by streaming risk data from IoT, telematics and environmental sources, enabling more granular, behavior-based pricing; the rise of AI agents, with employees increasingly training and overseeing AI systems to provide ethical oversight and enhance portfolio underwriting; AI governance and explainability becoming core compliance requirements to address bias, illusion and regulatory transparency; ecosystem convergence as insurance integrates into areas such as transportation, health and energy; and “DIY” as consumers use smartphones and connected devices to collect and share their own risk data Policyholder” emerged, prioritizing speed, transparency and control over traditional inspections.
McMillian continued: “With the industry transforming faster than ever, these trends all point to one theme – more connected and collaborative insurance.”
“Technology is transforming risk, the policyholder experience and driving new possibilities for underwriting risk options.
“It’s changing the nature of insurance – from something assessed at one point in time to something interpreted and understood on an ongoing basis.”