AI is reshaping insurance ‘gradually’ – Economist Impact

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to move beyond marginal productivity gains and into real-world impact, especially with the development of agentic AI tooling.

This is according to a September 2025 report from Economist Impact, sponsored by insurance software provider SAS.

Agentic AI systems have the capability to autonomously perform complex tasks, with the executive power to interact in defined ways with their immediate environment, such as responding to emails, updating databases and transforming data.

According to Jodie Wallis, global chief analytics officer at financial services provider Manulife, insurer workforces will become “hybrids of human employees and agents collaborating closely, with some agents working largely independently under human oversight”.

The findings also suggested that while the benefits of AI had so far been incremental, companies that had adopted the tooling early were seeing the greatest productivity gains.

These gains, however, were not necessarily translating immediately into cost savings, with further infrastructure needed to enable end-to-end business workflow management from AI “agents”.

Agentic AI

Andrew Pollard, insurance specialist at SAS UK and Ireland, explained: “Agentic AI has the potential to fundamentally change how insurers operate – not by replacing expertise, but by complementing it.

“These agents will accelerate repetitive and data-intensive work and when orchestrated together, they can unlock new levels of productivity and insight. But the real value emerges when insurers combine them with trusted, domain-specific solutions and human expertise to tackle complex challenges like risk modelling or regulatory compliance.”

Pollard added: “Agentic AI in particular is moving us beyond pilots into enterprise-wide transformation. These agents can operate autonomously or in concert with people, delivering faster service, reducing leakage and improving customer experiences.

“Most importantly, they free human teams to focus on creativity, judgement and relationship-building – the areas where people make the biggest impact.”