While most insurers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve today’s performance, many are “leaving value on the table,” according to Accenture’s new report, ‘How Insurers Drive Revenue by Deploying AI with Intent.’
Accenture surveyed 263 senior insurance executives with direct accountability for AI, data, technology, and business transformation across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
The survey involved conducting in-depth interviews with 15 executives from leading global carriers to understand the current state of AI transformation across Property & Casualty and Life insurance.
The report revealed that more than four in five (81%) insurers are seeing real revenue gains from AI, achieving at least a 5% improvement in gross written premiums from AI and data initiatives, driven by better pricing, personalisation and cross-selling.
Additional data from Accenture’s latest 2026 Pulse of Change survey reflects this momentum with 86% of insurance employees stating that AI tools have increased their overall productivity.
At the same time, only 23% of insurers have achieved true enterprise-wide integration, which highlights the need for a combined AI, business and people strategy, analysts state.
Other findings include legacy and data barriers, with legacy integration at 50% and data quality/accessibility at 45% being the top barriers to scaling AI.
Moreover, although 70% of insurers run targeted AI skills initiatives, only 14% have scaled these programs enterprise-wide, keeping capabilities concentrated in specialist groups.
83% of respondents reported moderate-to-severe gaps in linking AI capabilities to measurable outcomes, and only 32% of leaders are prioritising revenue growth as their main goal, “leaving significant value on the table.”
The report also found that 68% of respondents expect AI agents to transform core workflows. That shift is already visible on the ground: Accenture’s Pulse of Change research found that 57% of insurance employees regularly work with AI agents, 13 percentage points above the cross-sector average.
Finally, 56% of respondents have already implemented formal AI governance frameworks to gain a competitive advantage, according to the report.
Ravi Malhotra, Global Insurance Industry Lead at Accenture, stated: “Our research shows that while AI is already delivering real revenue gains for insurers, most are leaving value on the table. They need to shift from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide intelligence – treating AI not as a technology program, but as a driver of growth, with clear links from strategy to execution to create measurable P&L impact.
“Reinvention doesn’t happen without people. The winners will be those who bring together AI, business and people strategy – building cultures where underwriters, actuaries, and claims professionals trust AI, challenge it, and use it to do their best work.”
To move from tactical wins to full-scale reinvention, the report advises insurers to anchor deployments to strategic differentiators such as commercial underwriting, dynamic specialty pricing, and claims fraud detection.
Leaders must adopt a two-speed data architecture that modernises legacy systems over time while immediately building AI-ready data layers across disparate sources.
Expand AI skills across the workforce so domain experts like underwriters, actuaries, claims handlers, fraud investigators, and brokers can effectively shape AI deployment, redesign workflows, challenge outputs, and discover risk insights.
Insurers should also evolve the talent ecosystem to include people-led, agent-to-agent workflows – deploy AI agents across workflows while ensuring human oversight and high-value decision-making remain central, experts advice.
As well as changing the compliance mindset, to treat governance as a driver of trust and growth, turning ethical design into a competitive advantage. Build proactive, tiered governance frameworks that enable agility while maintaining control.
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