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Allianz Tops Evident AI Index for Insurance, While Zurich Makes Largest Leap
In its June 2026 release, the Evident AI Index for Insurance evaluated 30 leading insurers across North America and Europe on four dimensions—Talent, Innovation, Leadership, and Transparency—to assess AI maturity. Allianz emerged at the summit, overtaking AXA, and the data underscores how early adopters are pulling farther ahead.
Allianz’s dominance stems from a sizable AI specialist pool and comprehensive learning initiatives. Its AI Run program—a 12‑week curriculum on generative AI and prompting—has reached more than 150,000 employees across 70 countries. Meanwhile, the DataXcellence initiative has upskilled over 35,000 staff in data literacy and analytics. Extending education to the Supervisory Board further signals a governance‑centric approach.
Innovation also tipped the scales in Allianz’s favor. The company leapt from fourth place in 2025 to first in 2026, cataloguing over 900 AI use cases across underwriting, claims, fraud detection, and customer service. The index highlighted its Nemo platform—debuted last November—as the most sophisticated deployment. Nemo orchestrates seven specialized agents that handle food‑spoilage claims end‑to‑end, from photo submission to settlement, integrating storm‑data verification, policy coverage checks, fraud‑risk assessment, payment execution, and regulatory logging.
Beyond Allianz, the index paints a broader industry landscape. Among 65 publicly disclosed AI use cases with outcome data, 75 % demonstrate productivity gains, yet only 2 % translate into revenue uplift. Claims management constitutes 28 % of the disclosed cases, followed by internal process operations (20 %) and underwriting and pricing (17 %). The report argues that AI’s financial leverage lies in risk selection, pricing accuracy, fraud detection, and claims adjudication—areas that can directly influence premium income, which typically represents 60 % to 80 % of insurers’ revenue.
Only 8 % of the disclosed use cases show AI improving decision quality across connected workflows, though that share is growing fastest among the top‑10 carriers. The findings echo recent surveys that recognize the availability of tools yet highlight a lack of confidence to deploy them in core underwriting decisions.
Zurich Insurance Group delivered the most dramatic climb, leaping eight spots from 12th to fourth. Zurich’s surge is largely talent‑driven; AI Development roles now account for 44 % of its AI workforce. The insurer has poured £1.3 million into a UK apprenticeship program covering ethics, governance, accountability, and practical applications, and has launched an Agentic AI Hyper Challenge and AI prototyping internships.
At the heart of Zurich’s talent expansion lies a platform strategy. ZurichIQ—a modular generative‑AI platform—now operates across several markets, integrated into claims, underwriting, legal, and employee productivity workflows. Its suite includes AgentIQ for agents and brokers, GuidelineIQ to enforce underwriting adherence, ClaimsIQ for coverage and fraud detection, and VoiceIQ to boost service‑center performance.
The index’s methodology relies solely on publicly available data—job postings, research publications, patent filings, earnings calls, and press releases—to score companies against 68 indicators, thereby reducing self‑reporting bias that can distort survey‑based assessments.
Regulatory scrutiny is tightening. By early 2026, 23 states and Washington, D.C. had adopted the NAIC model bulletin on AI use in insurance. New York’s Department of Financial Services issued Circular Letter No. 7, mandating insurers to establish governance frameworks and clarify how AI informs underwriting and pricing decisions. Carriers that have invested in Responsible AI infrastructure—captured by the Transparency pillar in the Evident framework—appear better positioned to meet this scrutiny.
Only three carriers have disclosed enterprise‑level AI return on investment. Manulife reported CA$300 million in realized AI enterprise value in fiscal 2025, projecting CA$1 billion by 2027. Intact Financial disclosed CA$200 million in annual benefits from its AI models, expecting that figure to surpass CA$500 million by 2030. Generali revealed €100 million in bottom‑line run‑rate impact from AI and generative AI in fiscal 2025, with a revised target of over €350 million by 2027. The remaining insurers still gauge AI success through process metrics rather than financial outcomes.
Thus, the Evident AI Index for Insurance portrays a sector in which early adopters are consolidating their advantage, while many insurers remain fixated on incremental productivity gains. The next phase will likely see AI scaling into core underwriting and pricing decisions—a transition that demands both technological capability and robust governance to meet evolving regulatory expectations.
The full report, titled "Evident AI Index for Insurance: Key Findings Report, June 2026," is available on Evident Insights’ website.
Allianz’s dominance stems from a sizable AI specialist pool and comprehensive learning initiatives. Its AI Run program—a 12‑week curriculum on generative AI and prompting—has reached more than 150,000 employees across 70 countries. Meanwhile, the DataXcellence initiative has upskilled over 35,000 staff in data literacy and analytics. Extending education to the Supervisory Board further signals a governance‑centric approach.
Innovation also tipped the scales in Allianz’s favor. The company leapt from fourth place in 2025 to first in 2026, cataloguing over 900 AI use cases across underwriting, claims, fraud detection, and customer service. The index highlighted its Nemo platform—debuted last November—as the most sophisticated deployment. Nemo orchestrates seven specialized agents that handle food‑spoilage claims end‑to‑end, from photo submission to settlement, integrating storm‑data verification, policy coverage checks, fraud‑risk assessment, payment execution, and regulatory logging.
Beyond Allianz, the index paints a broader industry landscape. Among 65 publicly disclosed AI use cases with outcome data, 75 % demonstrate productivity gains, yet only 2 % translate into revenue uplift. Claims management constitutes 28 % of the disclosed cases, followed by internal process operations (20 %) and underwriting and pricing (17 %). The report argues that AI’s financial leverage lies in risk selection, pricing accuracy, fraud detection, and claims adjudication—areas that can directly influence premium income, which typically represents 60 % to 80 % of insurers’ revenue.
Only 8 % of the disclosed use cases show AI improving decision quality across connected workflows, though that share is growing fastest among the top‑10 carriers. The findings echo recent surveys that recognize the availability of tools yet highlight a lack of confidence to deploy them in core underwriting decisions.
Zurich Insurance Group delivered the most dramatic climb, leaping eight spots from 12th to fourth. Zurich’s surge is largely talent‑driven; AI Development roles now account for 44 % of its AI workforce. The insurer has poured £1.3 million into a UK apprenticeship program covering ethics, governance, accountability, and practical applications, and has launched an Agentic AI Hyper Challenge and AI prototyping internships.
At the heart of Zurich’s talent expansion lies a platform strategy. ZurichIQ—a modular generative‑AI platform—now operates across several markets, integrated into claims, underwriting, legal, and employee productivity workflows. Its suite includes AgentIQ for agents and brokers, GuidelineIQ to enforce underwriting adherence, ClaimsIQ for coverage and fraud detection, and VoiceIQ to boost service‑center performance.
The index’s methodology relies solely on publicly available data—job postings, research publications, patent filings, earnings calls, and press releases—to score companies against 68 indicators, thereby reducing self‑reporting bias that can distort survey‑based assessments.
Regulatory scrutiny is tightening. By early 2026, 23 states and Washington, D.C. had adopted the NAIC model bulletin on AI use in insurance. New York’s Department of Financial Services issued Circular Letter No. 7, mandating insurers to establish governance frameworks and clarify how AI informs underwriting and pricing decisions. Carriers that have invested in Responsible AI infrastructure—captured by the Transparency pillar in the Evident framework—appear better positioned to meet this scrutiny.
Only three carriers have disclosed enterprise‑level AI return on investment. Manulife reported CA$300 million in realized AI enterprise value in fiscal 2025, projecting CA$1 billion by 2027. Intact Financial disclosed CA$200 million in annual benefits from its AI models, expecting that figure to surpass CA$500 million by 2030. Generali revealed €100 million in bottom‑line run‑rate impact from AI and generative AI in fiscal 2025, with a revised target of over €350 million by 2027. The remaining insurers still gauge AI success through process metrics rather than financial outcomes.
Thus, the Evident AI Index for Insurance portrays a sector in which early adopters are consolidating their advantage, while many insurers remain fixated on incremental productivity gains. The next phase will likely see AI scaling into core underwriting and pricing decisions—a transition that demands both technological capability and robust governance to meet evolving regulatory expectations.
The full report, titled "Evident AI Index for Insurance: Key Findings Report, June 2026," is available on Evident Insights’ website.
