More than half (55%) of UK insurers have already integrated artificial intelligence (AI) into core business functions, but many are now confronting the industry’s growing “AI execution gap”, according to a recent report from Earnix, a Dynamic-AI platform for insurance.
Earnix’s survey is based on insights from more than 400 global insurance executives, including 40 UK insurance leaders.
The findings show that while UK insurers are accelerating AI adoption, many are facing the challenge of moving from isolated AI use cases to enterprise-scale operational decision-making.
The report also found that 98% of UK insurers are either already using, or planning to use, generative AI to process unstructured data, significantly ahead of the global average.
Meanwhile, 30% of UK insurers acknowledge they are falling significantly behind customer expectations for personalisation.
In addition, 91% of UK insurers plan to increase investment in third-party data, while 53% of respondents say regulation is moderately slowing AI innovation.
The research also shows that UK insurers are prioritising AI for operational workflows such as claims processing and policy issuance ahead of customer retention use cases.
Adrian Mincher, Head of UK, Ireland and South Africa at Earnix, said, “UK insurers have clearly moved beyond experimenting with AI in isolated pilots. What comes through strongly in this research is that the pressure has shifted to making AI work consistently in the real world – inside pricing, underwriting, claims and customer decision-making, where speed, governance and commercial performance all matter at the same time.
“There’s no shortage of ambition or investment across the market, but many firms are still finding it difficult to turn insight into action at scale. That’s especially visible around personalisation, where customer expectations are moving quickly and operational processes are struggling to keep up. The conversation around AI is becoming far more practical now – less about testing the technology, and more about whether insurers can bridge the execution gap, and actually embed AI confidently and at scale into the way decisions get made every day.”
