“Carriers need to be realistic about how much change they can absorb, and how they sequence initiatives to build on each other rather than competing against each other. The most successful transformations are relentless in vision but pragmatic in execution.”
Synthesizing what 100+ carrier executives learned in 2025 and where they’re headed next #
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74% of insurers say legacy systems are holding back their business, but only 28% have a plan to address it. Nearly half of all insurance purchases now happen through digital channels, and 64% of policyholders say they’d switch carriers for a better digital experience.
This webinar delivers insights from dozens of industry experts and hundreds of insurance executives who were part of Equisoft’s full Accelerate webinar series. It examines the real challenges carriers are facing, what solutions they are implementing today, and the priorities shaping strategy in 2026 and beyond.
The central theme: perfection isn’t the goal. Progress is.
Insurers that are pulling ahead are modernizing iteratively, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) thoughtfully, and building the data and digital foundations that competitive insurance now requires, not just waiting for ideal conditions.
Session agenda #
- What challenges are insurers facing today?
- What solutions are insurers implementing right now?
- What are insurer priorities for 2026 and beyond?
What you'll learn #
- The true cost of legacy batch processing — Why insurers relying on batch-based policy administration systems (PAS) pay for the same transaction up to three times: the initial interaction, the batch run, and manual reconciliation.
- Why scaling AI is a people and process challenge — GenAI investments surged 300% in 2025, yet 70% of scaling barriers have nothing to do with technology. Culture, process, and data readiness are bottlenecks.
- How data quality failures cascade into operational costs — Transfer rejection rates hitting 30% in some markets reveal how poor data governance silently inflates costs across claims, servicing, and underwriting.
- What makes digital agent tools the strongest CX differentiator — Insurers with modern quoting, illustration, and self-service tools outperform on both data quality and customer experience (CX) culture simultaneously.
- How to build a 2026 technology roadmap that delivers value every 3 to 6 months — A practical framework for setting KPIs, selecting technology without creating new dependencies, and iterating fast.
Key insights from this session #
The legacy PAS problem is bigger than most insurers admit #
Legacy policy administration systems — some 20 to 40 years old — were architected for batch processing, not the real-time, API-driven integrations that modern customer experience demands. Closed architecture and hard-coded logic make them expensive to change just as customer expectations accelerate. The result: insurers pay for the same transaction multiple times—initial interaction, batch run, and manual reconciliation—on top of an inability to react to market needs without costly vendor involvement.
What’s more, 68% of insurers plan to increase investments in application modernization. Modern PAS technology is evolving toward microservices architecture, event-driven processing, API-first design, and modular product catalogues that give carriers genuine self-sufficiency, eliminating the need to create 50 product codes every time compliance requirements change.
AI adoption is wide, but scaling it is the real challenge
76% of insurers have deployed generative AI (GenAI) in at least one business function, with life insurers slightly ahead at 82%. GenAI investments surged 300% in 2025, and 89% of insurance respondents plan to invest further, with 92% maintaining a dedicated GenAI budget.
Yet 70% of scaling challenges have nothing to do with the technology itself. People, process, and culture are the real barriers. Current AI applications like service chatbots, document summarization for underwriting, and claims fraud detection are delivering real results. One insurer saw claims processing time drop 60% while fraud detection improved. The next frontier is agentic AI: systems that don’t just understand a customer’s request but execute it across all relevant systems in real time.
The critical dependency: AI models are only as good as the data feeding them. Insurers must prioritize data cleansing and keep models focused on narrow, clean data sets to reduce hallucination risk and build production-grade confidence.
Data quality failures are costing carriers more than they realize #
Analysis from the UK pensions market reveals transfer rejection rates of 33%. Root causes: old or poor-quality customer data, manual entry at decision points, and provider manual processes. The same fragmented data, inconsistent quality, and unclear governance strategies are active pain points across life insurance carriers globally.
The industry response is systematic: standardizing rejection reason codes, introducing validation rules for account number formats, building API-based data interrogation, and deploying messaging tools that resolve near-misses without full rejection. The takeaway for carriers: data modernization is not a back-office project. It is a customer experience initiative.
Digital tools for agents are the strongest CX differentiator #
Among all variables correlated with CX maturity, digital tools for agents emerged as the strongest differentiator. Insurers that have implemented quoting and illustration software, electronic applications, automated underwriting, and self-service portals in the past 12 to 24 months are seeing measurable user improvements. These organizations also tend to have stronger data quality and a more deliberate customer experience culture.
Agent tools, data quality, and CX culture are mutually reinforcing cornerstones. Insurers cannot sustainably improve one without the others.
Integration strategy should start with ROI, not perfection #
Life insurers evaluating integration investments should resist pursuing ideal real-time API integration from day one. CSV file exchange and periodic batch integrations can deliver measurable value faster and at lower cost, and the path from batch to real-time is more incremental than it appears.
The practical framework: identify where volumes are highest or process breaks most frequent, calculate the true operational cost of manual steps, and model the payback period. Factor in operational risk—error rates, complaint volumes, transfer times—since this often justifies investment in ways pure ROI calculations miss. Start somewhere. Every provider in the market, even those with decent integration, still has room to improve.
The 2026 roadmap: three interconnected priorities #
When life insurers and experts were asked to consolidate priorities, three interconnected focus areas emerged:
- Reducing operational costs through process simplification, queue reduction, and workflow automation
- Building enabling capabilities that support both cost reduction and sales growth: modernized data architecture, API ecosystems, cloud infrastructure, and advanced analytics
- Growing sales through customer-centric approaches, including self-service portals, digital-first acquisition journeys, and omnichannel experiences for policyholders and agents alike
The recommended strategic framework: start with a current-state analysis and set measurable KPIs (self-service adoption rates, average processing times, work queue counts). Select technology with an eye toward reducing new dependencies. Deliver value in three-to-six-month iterations. And measure outcomes across the full ecosystem: customers, agents, employees, and partners.
Deepen your knowledge: Insurance priorities, PAS modernization, and CX #
- Advanced PAS & insurance technology to optimize customer experience — A deep dive into how modern policy administration systems break the legacy cycle to enable real-time, omnichannel customer experiences
- PAS modernization knowledge hub — Practical guidance on every stage of a policy administration modernization journey, from business case to go-live
- Customer experience in life insurance knowledge hub — A comprehensive guide to building a competitive, data-driven CX strategy across the full insurance value stream
- Data management and migration knowledge hub — How carriers can tackle fragmented data, migration complexity, and integration challenges as part of their modernization strategy
- Life Accelerated podcast — Subscribe to Equisoft’s flagship podcast for ongoing conversations with insurance industry experts on digital transformation, AI, and carrier strategy
