What does it take for the insurance industry to embrace AI?

The honest truth? Most insurers are further away than they'd like to admit.

The last two years have been full of pilots, prototypes, and proofs of concept. And that's fine — but there's a world of difference between a proof of concept and a compliant, production-grade deployment in a regulated environment. That gap is where the real work is, and it isn't small.

AI itself isn't the bottleneck. The technology has moved fast. The problem is what's underneath it — legacy stacks, fragmented supply chains, old integrations that were never designed to talk to anything like this. Business culture. Operations. That's where AI hits a wall.

So where does the fearless leader begin? With an honest, unflinching audit. Not another pilot. Not another vendor demo. A clear-eyed look at what you're actually working with, where the gaps are, and how far you really are from deploying AI at scale. That clarity alone is worth the investment.

Then build the vision. What does your organisation look like in ten years if AI is genuinely embedded at its core? Run the sessions, get the right people in the room, and map it out before you spend a penny on building anything. Two documents — where you are, where you're going — tell you everything about the size of the challenge ahead.

From there, you're ready to move. An enterprise agile approach tends to work well here, delivering capability in stages rather than betting everything on a single transformation programme.

Also, get the right people involved early. Whether that's internal talent or outside expertise, you need people who understand the landscape and can help you move quickly. This space isn't waiting.