ITC London once again served as an important pressure test for P&C insurers — the place where leaders validate their 2026 strategies against what’s unfolding across the market.
What stood out wasn’t the volume of AI-themed talks, but the focus on innovation, digital transformation, and the future of insurance. Carriers are no longer asking whether AI will reshape insurance. They’re now urgently assessing whether their organizations are ready for what AI demands.
Amid the noise, six questions rose to the surface. Questions that reveal where the industry is heading, where the pressure points lie, and what leaders need to confront now to compete in a rapidly shifting landscape.
Here are the six questions Europe’s P&C innovators can’t afford to ignore after ITC London — and what they mean for decision-makers.
Question #1: Is your data strategy genuinely ready for AI at scale?
Across sessions, speakers reinforced a foundational truth: AI is only as strong as the data beneath it. AXA XL’s Ashok Krishnan made this front and center. Carriers cannot scale AI until they confront fragmented estates, inconsistent data quality, and siloed systems created by years of mergers and legacy complexity.
His message: data must become a shared, productized enterprise asset across underwriting, pricing, claims, and distribution. Pilots may succeed with imperfect data, but AI in production exposes every weakness.
Bottom line:
- Data foundations must be built before models.
- Data must be governed and product-managed.
- AI use cases should follow measurable data readiness, not precede it.
Question #2: Are you leading with outcomes, or with technology?
The panel with Arslan Hannani (Aviva) and Laurie Davison (Munich Re) tackled a topic close to our hearts at Duck Creek: tech adoption in a legacy industry. Their shared argument was clear — technology does not create value; outcomes do.
Hannani challenged leaders to distinguish between tech-driven improvement and market-driven improvement. Davison stressed that investments must anchor to credible business problems, not technology aspirations.
Their message cut to the core: legacy may be stable, but stability isn’t strategy. The real question is whether your estate still supports where you need to go.
Bottom line:
- Every initiative needs a target metric and counterfactual.
- The business owns outcomes, not IT.
Question #3: Are your core systems an accelerator — or a constraint?
“Core systems are crumbling.”
Insurers are now running two transformations at once:
- A multi-year cloud modernization
- A one-year push to deliver AI value
And the friction is growing.
AI moves at digital speed; legacy does not. This gap is where competitive disadvantages are formed.
Duck Creek’s modular SaaS and low-code configurability resonated with leaders looking for realistic paths forward — the ability to modernize system by system, continuously upgrade, and push rule and product changes in hours or days, not quarters.
Bottom line:
- Commit to a modernization path: modernize, surround, or replace.
- Evergreen, API-first, event-driven platforms are now baseline.
- Change velocity must become a core KPI.
Question #4: How will you govern AI risk without slowing delivery?
In a candid fireside chat, Fabrice Brossart (Hiscox) described overseeing 70 active AI initiatives. As AI scales, new risk categories are emerging: model drift, compromised inputs, prompt leakage, explainability gaps, and supply-chain exposure.
His guidance: success requires ambition and oversight. The leaders moving fastest embed governance into development and production cycles — guardrails and velocity working together.
Bottom line:
- Establish an AI risk framework (policy, registry, testing, monitoring).
- Define human-in-the-loop boundaries by use case.
- Integrate compliance into MLOps so governance accelerates delivery.
Question #5: Are your partnerships delivering measurable business value?
A sharp panel with Scott Sayce (DUAL Group), Magdalena Ramada Sarasola (WTW), and Juan de Castro (Cytora) emphasized a shift: carriers want measurable value, not features.
European leaders were clear — generic AI solutions won’t clear scrutiny unless they show insurance-native outcomes aligned to underwriting lift, loss ratios, cycle-time reductions, or operational efficiency.
Duck Creek’s Document Intelligence and early agentic AI capabilities reflect real policy lifecycles, claims complexities, and regulatory constraints.
Bottom line:
- Value must be proven through before-and-after metrics tied to your book.
- Outcomes must be co-owned with partners.
- Prefer partners with accelerators and pre-built integrations.
Question #6: Can your architecture deliver consistent omni-channel experiences today?
ITC London reinforced that customer experience is now an architectural question.
Policyholders expect fluid journeys across web, mobile, agent, and partner channels — requiring API-first design, event awareness, modern payments, and continuous deployment.
Duck Creek’s omni-channel demonstrations showed how OnDemand’s cloud-native architecture, uptime, and managed integrations enable consistent, scalable experiences without overburdening internal teams.
Bottom line:
- Standardize on APIs, events, and canonical models.
- Treat payments, documents, and communications as first-class services.
- Instrument CX with telemetry — abandonment, NPS, latency.
Looking Forward: Execution Over Vision
ITC London underscored a simple reality: carriers that turn these six questions into action will outpace those still debating strategy. The advantage now goes to insurers who can operationalize AI, modernize cores, elevate data, and deliver consistent experiences across every channel.
This isn’t about ambition. It’s about execution that moves the numbers.
Duck Creek’s modular, SaaS-driven approach aligns directly to the pressures surfaced across the conference, helping carriers modernize at their own pace while accelerating change, improving clarity, and delivering outcomes that matter.
If you’re shaping your 2026 roadmap, now is the time to pressure-test your readiness — and connect with an expert who can help turn these insights into measurable progress.
Pressure-test your 2026 roadmap. Connect with a Duck Creek expert to evaluate your data readiness, core architecture, and AI strategy against the six questions shaping Europe’s P&C market.
