INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

Growing Adoption Signals Progress As Cost Visibility, Accountability Drive AI Value: KPMG
Organizations are entering a pragmatic phase of AI, where success is no longer defined by experimentation, but by how effectively leaders turn investment into real business value, according to KPMG's latest Global AI Pulse Survey of business leaders. Read more.

Duck Creek Acquisition Creates Industry's Only Agentic Underwriting-To-Core Platform
Duck Creek Technologies is pleased to announce it has acquired Send Technology Solutions Ltd., a leading global AI-native underwriting orchestration engine. The investment creates the industry's first and only agentic solution to unite core insurance operations and intelligent underwriting workflows across the policy lifecycle for multiple operating models. Read more.

Brisc, Dream Payments Launch AI-Powered Reconciliation For Insurance Payments
Brisc AI and Dream Payments are pleased to announce a partnership to enable the automated matching of premium and claims payments for Dream's ecosystem of insurance companies, closing a reconciliation gap that has historically forced insurance finance teams to add headcount every time a program or line of business scales. Read more.

Accenture Edge, Google Cloud Bring Scalable Agentic AI Solutions To Mid-Market Companies
Accenture and Google Cloud are pleased to announce a suite of agentic solutions to enable mid-market companies to drive technology and AI transformation. Accenture Edge will bring Accenture's global strength and leadership position with Google Cloud to a new market segment, providing pre-built solutions designed for the speed and scale mid-market organizations require. Read more.

Deloitte Unveils Connected Agentic Intelligence In Deloitte Omnia To Advance Audit & Assurance
Deloitte is pleased to announce the launch of a unified agentic intelligence network within Deloitte Omnia, Deloitte's global audit and assurance platform, setting a new standard in how audit and assurance services are delivered. Read more.

BMO Insurance Launches SmartDecision AI Tool
BMO is pleased to announce the launch of SmartDecision, an innovative underwriting solution that uses advanced analytics and AI-enhanced capabilities to deliver real-time decisions to clients and advisors. Read more.

Human Error Drove Majority Of H1 Cyber Losses
As organizations scramble to prepare for and defend against AI-native cyber threats, new insurance claims data from leading cyber risk solutions company Resilience suggests that AI is more often serving as a force multiplier for attack methods that exploit the fundamentals of cybersecurity, rather than creating new, sophisticated and autonomous attacks at scale. Read more.

Neocloud Providers Growing In AI Cloud Market
By 2030, “neocloud” providers – cloud providers built specifically for AI and high-performance workloads. – will capture 20% of the USD $267 billion A.I. cloud market, according to business and technology insights company Gartner, Inc. Read more.

IBM Advances Enterprise AI Software Development With Multi-Agent Capabilities
IBM is pleased to announce major updates to IBM Bob, its agentic software development platform, including new multi-agent capabilities, built-in AI cost and use analytics, and pre-built, specialized workflows for modernizing enterprise systems. Read more.

As Life Milestones Shift, Manulife Urges Canadians To Review Their Financial Protection
Manulife Canada is encouraging Canadians to reassess their life insurance coverage, as many remain financially exposed due to gaps, especially as responsibilities evolve beyond traditional life milestones. Read more.

Data Centers Through The Eyes Of A Risk Engineer
Step inside the fast-moving world of data center construction and operations in the fourth episode of the Future of Risk podcast, presented by Zurich U.S. Read more.

AI Accelerates Electricity Demand: Capgemini Study
The rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers is not only increasing total electricity demand, but also making it significantly harder to predict, challenging how power systems are planned and delivered, according to a new report from the Capgemini Research Institute. Read more.

Power-Generation Risks Mount As Electricity Demand Soars: FM Report
Aging equipment, protracted replacement times and a variety of risk-management shortcomings threaten efforts to meet rising global power demand fueled by AI data centers and broad-based electrification, according to a new report by commercial property insurer FM. Read more.

IBC Shares Guidance For Those Affected By Flooding
In response to severe weather and flooding, particularly in Ottawa, Insurance Bureau of Canada is sharing key insurance information and tips for affected residents. IBC has also launched its Virtual Community Assistance Mobile Pavilion (V-CAMP) helpline, providing real-time, one-to-one support and guidance. Read more.

In the InsurTech Spotlight this week:

BC Biz Radar
BC Biz Radar is a British Columbia data service that tracks every new business appearing in the province each week. Commercial brokers win new-business accounts by being first in the door, and BC Biz Radar gives a brokerage that timing edge as a subscription data feed. Records are classified into 11 verticals, and subscribers receive a weekly issue covering their slice of the market. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

Featured job opportunities:

Operations Services Associate
Gore Mutual Insurance
Vancouver, BC

Financial Security Advisor, Insurance
RBC Insurance
Montreal, QC

From Doug Intelligence Capital: Human or AI? Insurance businesses have invested heavily in people, or human capital. Many of these people represent the insurance-specific understanding, reasoning and knowledge required to perform insurance tasks around underwriting and claims. Insurance businesses also implement tools, today mostly digital, to perform basic but also increasingly complex tasks, offloading work from people. For years, these digital systems did not learn or reason, they just did what they were told. Meanwhile, as the insurance business grows ever more complex, more people and tools are required. The ongoing development of artificial intelligence has given rise to tools – AI Agents and Agentic Systems – which can both learn and reason. As tools, they can now take on some of the functions that were performed by people. Intelligence capital, whether human or AI, could (should?) be considered an asset class. Among the characteristics of the people most valued by an insurance business is their ability to apply insurance-specific understanding, reasoning and knowledge to their role. High performers are often recognized within their business unit, their overall organization, and even across the industry. Today, intelligence capital is mostly human-based; AI's share is tiny, but growing. How might this impact the competition within the insurance industry? More next week. Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca