Insurers enter 2026 amid heightened geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty—reshaping risk, pricing, and customer affordability. That volatility isn’t the differentiator; how carriers respond is. The ones pulling ahead today are shifting from reactive execution to deliberate reinvention: they are strengthening their digital core and putting AI to work where it changes outcomes—faster decisions, lower unit costs, and more consistent experiences across the value chain.  

Our 2026 prediction blog focuses on what leaders can control: operating-model choices and capability bets that compound even as the external environment keeps shifting. 

1. Insurers will reimagine their role as architects of aging gracefully 

By 2026, insurers will shift from treating longevity as a retirement funding problem to enabling aging gracefully, supporting financial security, health resilience, and independence across longer lives. 

Traditional approaches—siloed retirement, health, and protection products—reflect more internal, organizational structures and not how aging is experienced by customers. Longevity exposes people to interconnected risks: income volatility, potentially chronic illness, escalating care needs, and loss of independence. This matters most for carriers with long-tail liabilities in Life, Health, and Group Benefits, where outcomes compound over decades—and where earlier, more continuous engagement can change the curve. 

Engagement is the unlock. Accenture’s research on retirement participant engagement suggests that poor outcomes are often driven by process friction and episodic interactions, not a lack of intent; simplified journeys and timely nudges can improve participation and behaviors. In 2026, this engagement logic will increasingly be used toward protection adequacy, benefits navigation, and health-related decisions that drive long-term claims and persistency. 

Technology can help to make this viable at scale. Cloud-native platforms, data orchestration, and AI-driven personalization are here to help insurers to move from transactional touchpoints to ongoing guidance at sustainable cost . 

Leading carriers will: 

• Integrate income, protection, and health into cohesive offerings aligned to life stages 

• Deliver low-cost personalized guidance that improves savings behaviors, coverage choices, and benefits navigation 

• Orchestrate ecosystems across healthcare, wealth, and care services so customers experience a joined-up journey, not a set of products 

The insurers that are likely to win won’t be the ones that simply manage products best. They’ll be the ones that help people retain independence longer, absorb shocks more effectively, and navigate aging with confidence—strengthening relevance and unlocking durable growth in a longevity-driven world. 

2. AI will collapse intent, workflow, and execution into a single operating model 

The pressure to change is real—slowing growth, aging demographics, and shifting expectations are forcing insurers to find new levers of advantage in cost and value. What’s different in 2026 is that AI doesn’t just automate tasks: it connects intent (humans), workflow (process), and execution (technology) through natural language and context. 

To compete, carriers will need to build an AI workbench: a governed set of reusable patterns, tools, and controls that let teams design, run, and supervise AI-enabled work across the value chain—without turning every single change into a bespoke tech project. 

In 2026, such workbenches will mature across five areas: 

• Value (intent-led work via natural language): Shift from click-path workflows to intent-led work where business users describe outcomes and AI composes the workflow across underwriting, claims, and service—with explicit boundaries (what AI can and cannot decide) and reusable templates. 

• Workforce composition (human-in-the-loop safeguards): Redesign roles so humans are a control point, not a formality—clear approval thresholds, exception handling, audit trails, and escalation paths for high-impact decisions. 

• AI digital core (context and orchestration): Treat contextualization as operational infrastructure: unify customer, policy, claim, risk, and interaction data so AI carries “what matters” across steps—not just fields. Then orchestrate work across systems, rules, APIs, and people—enabled by cloud architecture, modernization, and data quality. 

• Ecosystem partners (outcome-based delivery and monitoring): As “run” services might move to partners, there will be a shift from time-and-materials to outcome-based delivery, with continuous monitoring of service levels, leakage, quality, and customer outcomes end-to-end. 

• AI-first operating model (business–IT integration): Tighten business–IT integration so IT enables business teams to configure low-code/no-code agents safely—with governance, change controls, and accountability for decisions made with AI. 

By the end of 2026, the leaders won’t be defined by who “has AI.” They’ll be defined by who can industrialize AI safely by moving faster without losing control. 

3. Agentic commerce will redefine insurance distribution 

Consumers are rapidly normalizing AI as a default layer in purchase decision-making. Accenture’s latest consumer research shows that 66% of shoppers have used generative AI in the past three months and 77% plan to use it to support upcoming purchase decisions—particularly for discovery, comparison, and recommendations. That signals a lasting shift in how trust and choice are formed at the point of purchase. 

Insurance won’t be insulated. As AI becomes the first place consumers turn to frame decisions, categories that are complex, outcome-driven, and hard to compare are especially likely to be mediated by agentic systems. Insurance fits that profile precisely. Rather than navigating carrier sites or advisor-led journeys, consumers will increasingly rely on AI agents to assemble, evaluate, and refine coverage options on their behalf. 

The AI-Risk perspective on agentic commerce explains why this is structural rather than incremental: agentic systems don’t just recommend products; they orchestrate workflows—querying providers, applying constraints, optimizing trade-offs, and executing transactions inside one decision loop. 

This doesn’t imply the disappearance of insurers or advisors. It implies a redistribution of influence. Distribution advantage will be less about who owns the interface and more about who is most legible to AI decisioning upstream of purchase. In 2026, carriers will need products, pricing, and underwriting logic that can be expressed in machine-reasonable terms—with clear disclosures and decision paths that stand up to scrutiny. 

4. Platforms will be re-architected as innovation fabrics—not transaction engines 

Core platforms in insurance delivered standardization, control, and predictability—but they also often locked in yesterday’s processes. In 2026, that trade-off will break: personalization, faster product iteration, and AI-enabled ways of working are poised to make “stable but slow” a losing proposition. 

We see a shift toward innovation fabrics: a modular layer of reusable business capabilities, governed data products, and orchestration that allows insurers change decisions and journeys without rewriting the core every time. 

What changes in practice: 

• Sovereign AI rises to the fore. Insurers aiming to increasingly take control of their own technology destiny will employ sovereign AI instead of perpetually reacting to the fast-moving technology space.  

• Cloud-native becomes table stakes, not the point. The real shift is architectural: modular services, API/event-first integration, and release cadences that support continuous experimentation—not annual “platform releases.” 

• “Platform and ops” expands in P&C. We expect more packaged run capabilities (e.g., underwriting/claims delivered as outcomes, not projects) as insurers separate differentiating logic from commoditized execution. 

• Data moves from hindsight to action. “360” models stop being reporting constructs and will become more real-time decision inputs—pricing, triage, next-best-action—so innovation is powered more by what the insurer doesn’t know yet, not what dashboards already confirm. 

• Workbenches become the productivity surface. Underwriters and adjusters operate in digital environments where humans, AI, and data collaborate—with auditability and controls built in. 

By end of 2026, we believe that the tell will be measurable: shorter product / configuration lead times and a higher share of reusable capabilities exposed via APIs/events. 

5. Embedded distribution will scale from “adjacent channel” to a core growth engine 

By end-2026, the insurers growing fastest in new business will likely be those generating a meaningful share of new premium from embedded distribution through digital trading partners—not just from owned direct channels. 

The strategic point isn’t that embedded exists. It’s that placement is shifting toward the moments where decisions are made: checkout, onboarding, renewal, and workflow completion. That’s where attention, intent, and data concentrate, and where insurance can be made simple enough to buy. 

Growth will concentrate in ecosystems where protection is easiest to bundle into a transaction or workflow: 

• Retail and digital checkout / device ecosystems (product protection, shipping, returns, warranty add-ons). 

• Auto and mobility via OEM and dealer ecosystems, where interest in purchasing insurance inside the journey has been rising according to Accenture research. 

• Home and smart-building ecosystems (utilities, IoT platforms, smart-home services), where risk mitigation and services can sit alongside cover. 

• Travel and ticketing flows, including more dynamic, event-linked extensions. 

Execution won’t hinge on rhetoric. We think that winners will be the carriers that can offer API-first products, frictionless partner onboarding, and industrial yet flexible embedded offers, including service components where it strengthens the value proposition, not just the distribution pitch. 

Looking ahead: A new insurer economics is emerging 

The insurance industry’s revenue and cost structure is set to shift materially in the coming years—within a model that has traditionally been people- and IT-asset intensive. By mid-2026, we will publish our perspective on the revenue shifts we expect to see by 2030. We remain optimistic about an industry that has long proven resilient and we believe that those firms that execute by building the digital and data foundations that make speed safe; by using AI to change unit economics; and by earning distribution relevance in the moments where decisions actually happen will get an advantage. Please reach out to us on LinkedIn at either Khalid Lahraoui, Kenneth Saldanha or Naoyuki Shibata if you’d like to talk more about the future of insurance. 

Many thanks to Frédéric Brunier, David Levi , Romain Caillet, Arjun Mathai, Andre Schlieker, Juan DeMarchi and Fabrice Gardette for their invaluable contributions and insights which helped to shape this perspective.