Newsletters
Risk Central
Digital EditionAXA, Allianz Dominate AI Maturity Rankings as Industry Transformation Accelerates
A comprehensive assessment of artificial intelligence maturity among 30 major North American and European insurers reveals significant performance disparities, with European giants AXA and Allianz establishing commanding leads over competitors in the inaugural Evident AI Insurance Index.
The index evaluation, based on 76 indicators across talent, innovation, leadership and transparency pillars, shows that AI transformation efforts are beginning to yield measurable returns for insurance leaders, according to a report from Evident, a London-based business intelligence platform.
AXA secured the top position with 63 points, followed closely by Allianz at 61.5 points—both scoring significantly higher than the remaining 28 insurers, which clustered tightly around a 35.5-point average.
This performance gap reflects years of strategic investment, according to Evident. Despite the insurance industry’s conservative reputation—with the average profiled company founded over 140 years ago—26 of the 30 insurers had announced AI initiatives before ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch, demonstrating long-term commitment to the technology, the report noted.
Charles Brindamour, CEO of fourth-ranked Intact Financial, emphasized the long-term perspective required: “At Intact, we think in terms of decades, not quarters… Intact was an early adopter of data and AI, and the transformative power is undeniable. For over a decade, Intact has used data and predictive AI to expand our competitive advantage in pricing and segmentation, which accounts for one-third of our Return of Equity outperformance.”
Early indicators suggest AI maturity correlates with improved financial performance. Among the 22 publicly traded insurers in the index, higher AI scores associate with declining expense ratios, according to Evident.
Significant Performance Disparities Across Business Models
The analysis reveals substantial differences between insurance categories, with property & casualty carriers significantly outperforming life insurers. P&C carriers averaged 37.7 points compared to 29.2 points for life insurers, with four P&C companies ranking in the top 10 versus only two life insurers.
This gap stems from fundamental business model differences, according to the report. P&C insurers benefit from short policy cycles, frequent customer interactions and abundant structured data, enabling faster AI development and clearer use cases. Life insurers face challenges from longer policy terms and minimal customer touchpoints, limiting data volume for model training.
USAA exemplifies P&C leadership, ranking third overall and first in talent density with nearly one in 20 employees working in AI-related roles—three times the index average. The insurer has leveraged its closed membership model and unified cloud architecture to deploy more than 200 AI products, including proprietary tools like EagleGPT and Code Assist, the report noted.
Geographic patterns also emerge, with U.S. insurers demonstrating higher AI talent density at 2.09% versus 1.85% for the index overall. However, European insurers lead in responsible AI talent, accounting for 47% of specialists in data ethics, governance and risk despite representing 36% of total AI talent.
The talent concentration extends beyond geography. Ten insurers employ 59% of the industry’s AI workforce, with Allianz alone accounting for 10% of the 23,000-plus AI professionals identified across all 30 companies. This concentration creates competitive advantages through faster innovation cycles, institutional knowledge accumulation and enhanced talent attraction.
Strategic Foundations Drive Sustainable Advantage
The index methodology suggests that sustained AI leadership requires balanced investment across the four critical areas that Evident evaluated: talent, innovation, leadership and transparency.
AXA and Allianz distinguish themselves as the only insurers ranking in the top five across each of these pillars
Talent development proves particularly crucial, with only 10 insurers demonstrating sophisticated training programs characterized by ongoing curriculum and granular specialization. Allianz leads this category through comprehensive upskilling initiatives launched in 2020, including global accelerator programs and specialized training across AI fundamentals, data literacy and prompt engineering, according to the report.
Innovation capabilities separate leaders from followers through research, patents and venture investments. AXA dominates research output, producing 24% of AI publications and 42% of citations across the entire index of insurers through its specialized research team and academic partnerships. Meanwhile, U.S. insurers lead patent filings, with State Farm holding the most AI-specific intellectual property dating back to 2015, the report noted.
Leadership communication remains inconsistent across the industry. While virtually every insurer mentions AI use cases in public communications, only 53 disclosed use cases include tangible business impact measurements, Evident found. Only three insurers—Intact Financial, Zurich Insurance Group and Aviva—have disclosed financial returns from AI activities. Intact Financial stands alone in providing comprehensive ROI estimates, reporting $150 million in annualized returns.
Alan Schnitzer, CEO of Travelers, highlighted the operational impact of AI: “In 2024, we implemented AI capabilities running from those driving efficiency through automation to more advanced generative AI and large language models. Over the past few years, automation and AI have been meaningful contributors to our expense ratio improvement.”
Responsible AI governance lags behind technical implementation, with 43% of insurers meeting fewer than half the transparency indicators evaluated. European insurers lead this area, driven by regulatory requirements including the EU AI Act and GDPR. Only 12 insurers have published public-facing responsible AI principles, despite the critical importance of ethical AI deployment in trust-based insurance relationships.
The index findings suggest that while many insurers find themselves in similar starting positions, early and sustained investment across all four pillars creates compounding advantages that become increasingly difficult for competitors to match.
Obtain the full index here. &
