Avasant radar guides P&C carriers toward AI-native partners

P&C carriers are no longer shopping for software in tidy categories. They are buying operating partners who can help them survive a market where severe storms, rising replacement costs, and impatient customers are all pushing harder at once. Avasant’s Property and Casualty Insurance Digital Services 2026 RadarView treats that reality as a partner-selection problem, not just a technology one.

What the radar is really telling buyers

The 2026 report is a 110-page analysis published in May 2026, and it evaluates 30 leading service providers. That is a broader field than Avasant’s 2025 edition, which ran 98 pages and covered 25 providers, and the expansion itself is a useful signal: the market is widening as more firms claim they can help carriers modernize for an AI-native era.

Avasant’s broader RadarView framework is designed to judge suppliers as long-term partners for digital journeys, not just transaction vendors. In the P&C service market, the firm groups providers into categories such as Leaders, Innovators, Disruptors, and Challengers, which gives buyers a way to sort the field without assuming that one type of firm fits every transformation agenda. For a carrier trying to overhaul policy, claims, distribution, and analytics at the same time, that distinction matters.

Why the buying bar has moved up

The pressure on P&C leaders is not theoretical. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said rapidly rising claims costs, driven primarily by increased frequency of severe storms and rising replacement costs, continued to challenge U.S. property and casualty insurers in 2023. It also marked the third consecutive year of underwriting losses. Verisk and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association estimated those underwriting losses at $21.1 billion, while AM Best reported a $21.2 billion net underwriting loss.

The catastrophe picture is getting bigger, not smaller. Swiss Re said global insured natural-catastrophe losses exceeded USD 100 billion in 2023, and it expected 2024 insured natural-catastrophe losses to exceed USD 135 billion, with secondary perils such as severe thunderstorms playing a major role. On the customer side, JD Power said homeowner property claims satisfaction fell to a seven-year low in 2024 amid record catastrophic events and slower repair times. That is the practical backdrop for every vendor discussion, because carriers now need faster claims handling, better risk selection, and more responsive service at the same time.

The criteria that matter most in partner selection

Avasant’s framing is useful because it moves the conversation beyond whether a provider can sell modernization services. The real question is whether that provider can help a carrier build an operating model that works under margin pressure, climate volatility, and more granular risk data.

The most important test is whether a partner can work in a modular ecosystem. The report’s guidance suggests the old choice between monolithic systems and point tools is too narrow for where the market is headed. Carriers need service providers that can help assemble a resilient stack across policy, claims, distribution, and analytics, while still supporting real-time decisions.

Look for partners that can prove they can do all of the following:

• Scale agentic AI across workflows, not just in isolated experiments.

• Deliver real-time risk analytics that can inform underwriting and claims actions quickly.

• Support intermediary enablement, so agents and brokers can move faster with better data and service tools.

• Integrate with a modular architecture instead of forcing a carrier into a single proprietary lane.

• Handle the complexity that comes with more granular risk data, especially when climate-driven volatility changes loss patterns faster than legacy processes can absorb.

Those are not generic digital-transformation talking points. They are buying criteria shaped by the economics of P&C, where better service, better pricing, and better decisions now have to happen together.

What AI-native should mean in practice

Avasant’s language around an AI-native era is important because it signals a shift in expectations. Carriers do not just need partners that can add AI features to existing workflows. They need firms that can help redesign the workflow around AI, especially where risk assessment, customer service, and operational triage intersect.

That means a vendor should be able to show more than a proof of concept. A credible partner should demonstrate how AI will fit into claims intake, catastrophe response, fraud detection, and distribution support without creating a brittle stack of disconnected pilots. The best providers will also understand where human oversight still matters, especially in high-severity claims and in decisions that require regulatory or customer sensitivity.

Where the radar fits into a carrier’s roadmap

The strongest way to use Avasant’s RadarView is as a filter for sequencing. A carrier modernizing core systems should first ask which partners can help stabilize the operating base and then layer AI on top in ways that improve speed and decision quality. A carrier with a more advanced data platform should ask which firms can turn that foundation into real-time underwriting and claims intelligence. And a carrier looking at distribution modernization should test which providers can strengthen intermediary enablement rather than treating agents and brokers as an afterthought.

That is what makes the 2026 edition especially relevant. The larger supplier set, the emphasis on agentic AI, and the focus on real-time risk analytics all point in the same direction: P&C service buying is becoming a search for long-term operating partners. In a market defined by worsening catastrophe economics and higher customer expectations, the winners will be the carriers that choose vendors for resilience, not just for features.