ACORD, the international body responsible for insurance data standards, has released its 2026 Insurance Digital Maturity Study assessing how digital capability is being translated into business performance across the sector.
The analysis covers 210 of the world’s largest insurers across property and casualty, life, and reinsurance lines, and identifies that only seven per cent of firms are classified as Digital Competitors, the highest maturity category.
The findings from ACORD show that although close to a third of insurers have completed broad digitalisation across their operations, fewer than ten per cent have progressed to the most advanced stage of maturity.
The majority remain in mid-development phases. ACORD notes that the widening performance gap between leaders and slower adopters is less about total technology investment and more about how effectively organisations turn digital capability into operational execution and measurable outcomes.
“For many insurers, core back-office operations remain largely manual and siloed, with digital efforts treated as a collection of discrete projects rather than a coordinated, enterprise-wide transformation programme,” commented Dave Sterner, Senior Vice President, Research & Development at ACORD. “Insurers that treat digitisation as an integrated business system spanning technology, data, operating models, culture, and governance are best positioned to outperform in an increasingly complex and competitive market.”
ACORD divides insurers into five maturity levels. At the top are Digital Competitors, which ACORD describes as firms using fully integrated digital capability to influence customers and partners, improve performance and support strategic positioning. Below them are Digitalised Firms, followed by Digital Aspirations, Localised Digitalisation, and Digital Laggards, the latter reflecting organisations where digital activity is limited, fragmented or not prioritised.
The study from ACORD indicates that only the Digital Competitors group achieved above-average profitability across the sample and also recorded the strongest long-term profit growth. Over a ten-year period, ACORD reports this group delivered a total shareholder return of 254%, compared with 180% for Digitalised Firms and 154% for those in the Digital Aspirations category.
ACORD’s analysis also suggests a link between higher digital maturity and wider adoption of ACORD Data Standards across enterprises. According to ACORD, less mature insurers typically use these standards in isolated areas focused on compliance or limited integration, while more advanced organisations apply them across the entire value chain to enable connected operations.
“Data standardisation is a key prerequisite to effectively leveraging AI,” added Sterner. “Insurers can only scale AI where the organisation already has modern, integrated front-to-back capabilities. While AI is accelerating the industry’s ambitions, digital maturity is what determines whether those ambitions translate into durable advantage.”
