Experts say data is golden, but only if insurers know how to leverage it

When it comes to competing in the insurance market in an age of AI, data may be “golden” but the action insurers take with that data is a more crucial differentiator, industry leaders said.

“Data is gold right now, and this is something that all companies want to have to build their assets,” Kirill Fainshmidt, head of insurance at DataArt, said. “But it’s not always about volume of data and how many terabytes of data we have or a company has.”

Similarly, Mubbin Rabbani, chief product officer at CLARA Analytics, noted, “Having that data or having access to that data is one thing. It’s being able to take that data and turn that into action, and that’s where the migration of competitive advantage is moving.”

Rabbani said, “Anyone can access millions and millions of claims,” but noted that the differentiator is whether a company can “dissect the grain of that detail and apply the right use cases and goals for agents to look at, turn that into action and balance that action” with automating some tasks versus having human agents handle others.

“At the end of the day, it’s one thing to implement technology, be it machine learning models, predictive models, generative AI or agents,” Rabbani said. “How is all of that translating into metrics that matter to a chief claims officer? You know, everything down from that combined ratio to loss and expense.”

Advantage for smaller carriers

Fainshmidt suggested that having more AI-ready data could potentially be an advantage for smaller carriers, which may be able to apply it in more novel ways than larger, more established carriers that are constrained by more “levels of bureaucracy.”

He explained that carriers may possess a lot of archived data, but much of it is “like silhouettes, the same data from different processes — like three departments working with their own set of data, which creates a huge headache and overlap.

“For smaller companies, on the other hand, they are like basically cloud native companies creating modern infrastructure, not working with all those policies, admin systems and so on. For them, it’s easier, and they can achieve real-time data much faster,” he said.

Underwriting vs. distribution

But the kind of advantages and opportunities data can facilitate can also depend on the sector, according to Dock Treece, co-founder and principal of Treece Strategy Group.

“Data and AI and technology have impacts on both underwriting and in distribution, but those impacts are considerably larger and offer much more opportunity on the distribution side as opposed to underwriting,” Treece said.

He noted that “most of the big players and even a lot of the smaller players have had access to a ton of data for a very long time.” As such, having access to new data or new technology like AI is “not completely changing the world of insurance underwriting or allowing insurers to offer vastly different pricing or something like that,” he suggested.

This is the case even for smaller or newer insurance companies that can come into the market and “immediately” have access to much of the same data that large insurance companies have had for a long time, he said.

On the distribution side, however, Treece said, “the impacts of leveraging AI, technology and data are much larger.”

Like Fainshmidt, Treece said this is where smaller agencies can really “compete with some of the larger companies, as opposed to establishing a new carrier.” Here again, larger companies were said to be at somewhat of a disadvantage precisely because they are so established and come with defined processes.

“In part, their high headcounts are the result of traditional distribution models,” Treece said. “Their budgets are eaten up by employee count rather than through modern marketing or distribution efforts. So, they can’t necessarily afford to pay the same marketing dollars per lead that a newer company that is AI native, based in technology, doesn’t have the same high headcounts and defined processes can pay for the same marketing lead.”

Unlocking data

But just having the data is not enough, Rabbani emphasized, as being able to understand data from different sources and “put that into one consolidated picture” is the key to unlocking what data can really achieve.

“One of the nuances here with data is that it’s not just claims system data or structured data fields; that’s actually the easy part,” he said. “It is all of the unlock in what these users and adjusters put into their notes, their diary systems.”

He noted that “so much of the claims world is still being driven by paper and documents,” that being able to understand “what’s in documents associated with claims, what comes in from the claim, what comes in from policy and being able to reconcile that with the progression of the data in a claim, including the financials, including the notes” is a key advantage.

© Entire contents copyright 2026 by InsuranceNewsNet.com Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted without the expressed written consent from InsuranceNewsNet.com.

Rayne Morgan is a journalist, copywriter, and editor with over 10 years' combined experience in digital content and print media. You can reach her at rayne.morgan@innfeedback.com.