Datos Insights report targets intelligence-ready P&C carriers for 2026

Nearly 60% of surveyed carriers and managing general agents expected AI to significantly transform their business models within the next one to three years, AM Best said in an April 27, 2026 press release. Datos Insights’ 2026 property and casualty trends report, Top Trends in Property and Casualty, 2026: Building the Intelligence-Ready P/C Carrier, treats AI less as a feature race than as an operating-model test. The real question is whether a carrier can make underwriting, claims, billing, service, and product work off the same data and workflow foundation.

What intelligence-ready means in P&C

The phrase “intelligence-ready” captures a shift that is already underway in P&C software strategy. Carriers are moving from simple workflow digitization toward continuous decisioning, where data quality, process consistency, and system integration matter as much as the individual applications themselves. That is a meaningful change for insurers still managing fragmented cores, separate claims stacks, and disconnected analytics tools.

In practice, the model points to four concrete capabilities:

• A unified data layer that normalizes policy, claims, billing, and customer information
• Workflow orchestration that routes work across departments without manual re-entry
• Decisioning embedded in underwriting and claims rather than isolated in dashboards
• Governance that keeps AI, automation, and security aligned with operational controls

The discussion shifts from “what AI tool should a carrier buy” to “what has to be rebuilt so AI can actually work inside the business.”

The market is already validating the pressure

The urgency is not theoretical. The same AM Best survey flagged data readiness and security challenges as likely brakes on fast adoption, which is exactly where many modernization programs stall.

In a May 6, 2026 video discussing the survey results and the industry’s position on AI strategy and implementation, AM Best said, “artificial intelligence appears to be ready, but most insurers are not.”

BriteCore’s 2025 Annual P&C Core Systems Report, released October 29, 2025, drew on insights from 60 P&C insurance carriers across North America and found insurers were adapting technology strategies to accelerate growth, improve efficiency, and modernize for the future, with integration, analytics, and AI all in focus. The market is no longer debating whether AI belongs in P&C. It is debating whether the underlying carrier architecture can support it.

That debate is sharpening as the commercial P&C market softens after several years of sustained rate increases. In a slower pricing environment, carriers need more precise underwriting, tighter expense control, and faster claims handling just to protect margin. Climate volatility adds another layer of pressure, which makes data consistency and workflow control more than back-office concerns.

What has to change in the next 12 to 24 months

McKinsey wrote in July 2025 that many P&C carriers were already using AI to combine claims data with external data to identify new risk factors such as climate-related exposures. It also argued that insurers can create synergies by reorganizing entire workflows around a domain-wide approach.

KPMG’s 2025 Intelligent Insurance report breaks AI transformation into phases: Enable, Embed, and Evolve. The first phase is about readiness, the second about operational integration, and the third about scaling the new operating model. For P&C carriers, that sequence suggests a clear near-term agenda:

• Build a governed data model that can support underwriting and claims decisions without constant manual cleanup
• Connect core systems so a decision made in one workflow is visible to the others
• Move AI from experimentation into live case handling, triage, and exception management
• Strengthen data and security controls before expanding automation across more lines of business
• Use analytics to expose where processes break, slow down, or depend on tribal knowledge

Carriers that can standardize data definitions, improve workflow visibility, and make decisioning part of daily operations will be able to absorb AI more safely and more quickly.

What remains aspirational

Full-scale autonomous P&C operations remain aspirational for most carriers. The limiting factors are still the same ones AM Best highlighted, data readiness and security, plus the practical complexity of aligning underwriting judgment, claims review, and customer servicing across systems that evolved separately.

The strongest value proposition in 2026 is not a point solution claiming intelligence. It is a platform or operating model that helps a carrier become decision-ready.