State of AI Research in Insurance 2026

Evident AI Research Tracker | July 2026

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Insurers’ AI research capability is increasing, but the gap between leaders and laggards is widening.

The insurers pulling ahead share clear differentiators: dedicated AI research talent, senior AI leadership, and academic partnerships. As insurer research matures, the focus will shift from how much institutions publish to whether research is linked to practical insurance workflows, frontier AI topics and external technical capability.

Below, we break down the top stories from our 2026 Insurance AI Research Trends report, including:

Why dedicated AI research talent is the sector's next maturity step
Academic partnerships as a gateway to AI research capability
GenAI's growing share of insurer research, and the rise of agentic

Evident AI Research Tracker
The Evident AI Research Tracker looks beyond publication counts to identify which insurers are building the talent, research focus and external networks needed to move AI closer to deployment. To access the full report and dataset, get in touch.

KEY FINDINGS | JULY 2026

The next step: dedicated AI research talent

Allianz, AXA and Manulife employ the most talent publishing AI research, but formal AI research roles remain limited across the sector. Of the three, AXA and Manulife stand out, with formal research roles and senior AI leadership in place.

As GenAI and agentic use cases accelerate, publishing research papers alone will not be enough. Insurers that want to test new methods, evaluate performance and scale AI across the enterprise will need dedicated research talent to do it.

Academic partnerships: a gateway to AI research capability

Academic partnerships are increasingly helping insurers build AI research capability, offering specialist expertise, talent pipelines and priority research themes, bypassing dependency on internal research investment.

Generali, AXA, Allstate and Zurich each take a different approach, from broad university networks and targeted research programmes to long-running talent partnerships and dedicated AI labs.

GenAI and agentic creating new areas for competitive differentiation

GenAI now accounts for 25% of insurers' AI research, while agentic AI has risen to 6% as leading firms begin testing it in practical workflows. Across both, business impact is strongest where research is tied to operational problems or deployment constraints.

Allianz's EKA (Enterprise Knowledge Assistant) research shows what this looks like in practice: agentic AI grounded in real claims workflows, with human oversight built in.

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