Best’s Special Report: AM Best Survey Finds Most Insurers Expect to Leverage AI Though Data, Security Challenges May Impede Fast Adoption
- April 27, 2026 08:49 AM (EDT)
//BestWire// - An AM Best survey of carriers and managing general agents (MGAs) to gauge the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the insurance industry found that while nearly 60% of respondents expect AI to significantly transform their business models within the next one to three years, data readiness, security and privacy and integration with legacy systems are their largest impediments in deploying AI within their organizations.
The survey results can be found in a new Best’s Segment Report, titled, “Artificial Intelligence Appears to be Ready, But Most Insurers Are Not.” According to the results from more than 150 respondents, made up of rated insurers and MGAs with a Best’s Performance Assessment, insurers are rapidly deploying AI, with 41% stating that their organization is actively using AI across core business areas and nearly 20% agreeing or strongly agreeing that their organization is at an advanced stage of implementation. A majority of respondents said their company has a formal AI policy in place. The survey also found that insurers are less concerned with change resistance and third-party model risk but viewed the potential for breaches of AI systems by bad actors, or data readiness, as significant challenges to AI implementation.
“AI systems are heavily dependent on high-quality, clean and well-structured data. Legacy systems can create significant barriers when implementing AI because they simply were not built for this type of data integration. Many of these legacy systems are outdated and store data in inconsistent formats lacking standardization,” said Kaitlin Piasecki, industry research analyst, AM Best.
Sridhar Manyem, senior director, Industry Research and Analytics, AM Best, added:
“AI systems can produce unreliable outputs when underlying data is of poor quality, fragmented across legacy systems, insufficiently governed or lacking appropriate context. Insurers that have invested in modernizing their legacy systems and have robust data governance will find it easier to integrate AI into their workflow.”
Approximately two thirds of respondents said they seek to increase their AI investment in the next 12-24 months, with improving employee productivity, lowering operating costs and assisting with underwriting functions for risk selection and pricing leading goals sought by insurers. For those that have implemented AI solutions, 63% of respondents reported a small improvement in workforce productivity and satisfaction, with 11% reporting a significant improvement. Overall, 31% of the respondents said there would not be any material change to staffing with 37% expecting employees to be redeployed to higher-value work.
“Given that this technology is still relatively new, a return on investment in AI would be difficult to measure at this stage; the cost benefits will likely take years to materialize,” said Jason Hopper, associate director, Industry Research and Analytics, AM Best. “Insurance roles, especially those that require judgment, critical thinking and accountability, were ones respondents felt AI wouldn’t yet be able to fully replicate.”
To access the full copy of this special report, please visit http://www3.ambest.com/bestweek/purchase.asp?record_code=364437.
AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City.