Insurance Times Awards 2026: Xceedance on combining AI, software and human expertise

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Vikas Acharya, chief product officer at Xceedance, explains his firm’s entry to the Excellence in AI – Service Provider category

1. Why did you put yourselves forward for the category?

We entered the Excellence in AI – Service Provider category because we believe our approach to AI is fundamentally different.

Vikas Acharya

Vikas Acharya, chief product officer at Xceedance

At Xceedance, AI is not a standalone technology initiative; it is part of our orchestrated intelligence model, combining insurance expertise, software and human judgement to solve real business challenges.

Over the last four years, we have built IAN, an ecosystem of more than 120 insurance-focused agents designed to support specific insurance tasks across the value chain.

We wanted to showcase how a domain-led approach can help insurers adopt AI responsibly, at scale, and with a clear focus on business outcomes.

2. What do you think makes your entry stand out and why should you win the award?

Our entry stands out because it focuses on outcomes, not experimentation. Rather than applying generic AI tools to insurance workflows, we combine deep insurance expertise with purpose-built AI to address operational challenges.

We focus on micro-tasks rather than talking at a high level. For example, we can set up agents for London market marine insurance slips.

We’ve already deployed this approach globally through orchestrated intelligence and IAN. Clients are seeing efficiency gains of 35–50% in live insurance operations, while benefiting from a model that combines AI, software and human oversight.

3. What would winning this award mean to you and your firm?

Winning this award would recognise the four years we have invested in building and scaling AI capabilities for insurance.

It would validate our vision for orchestrated intelligence, that the future lies in combining AI, software and human expertise, not technology alone.

It would also honour the trust our insurance clients worldwide place in us as we help them adopt AI in a way that is practical, responsible and scalable.

We’ve recently had IAN independently audited against GDPR, the EU AI Act, CCPA, the Australian Privacy Principles and more, which has confirmed our effective privacy and security safeguards.