Global dynamics have accelerated. Fragmenting geopolitics, more interventionist industrial policies, and an increased focus on digital sovereignty are forcing insurance executives to rethink where to deploy capital, talent, and technology. Private capital is structurally reshaping insurance through run-off deals, consolidation, and asset-intensive platforms.
Meanwhile, generative and agentic AI are moving from experimentation into production, changing how work is done, how decisions are made, and introducing new, complex risk-management needs. As a result, decision cycles are shortening, capital is becoming less patient, and competitive advantages are at risk of decaying faster.
The themes from 2025 still apply, but clarity, focus, and speed now matter more than ambition alone.
A few forces set the context for 2026. Geopolitics and regionalization have shifted from background noise to CEO- and board-level design variables, becoming real operating constraints. At the same time, private capital is a permanent competitor, partner, and benchmark — now embedded in insurance economics. And AI is (finally) scaling, redefining decision-making and risk management and increasingly acting as a catalyst (and sometimes a prerequisite) for insurers’ biggest strategic bets. Here is what we see as the 10 to-dos for insurance CEOs:
1. Accelerate alignment on a single, enterprise-wide strategic narrative
Decide the few bets that matter, align the operating model behind them, and visibly tie capital and execution to the investor narrative. Many insurers still struggle with fragmented strategy: multiple priorities, inconsistent signals to investors, and operating models that only partially reflect stated ambitions.
Insurance CEOs must define a small number of strategic bets that genuinely matter for competitive position, and enforce them. The line of sight must be clear between strategic narrative, capital allocation, operating decisions, and incentives — including being explicit about what to stop doing.
2. Run M&A, divestitures, and reinsurance as one capital portfolio
Buy where you can win, exit where you can’t, and recycle capital systematically into future profit pools — with clear rules, stage gates, and a ringfenced capability systematically operating against the strategic narrative.
Capital markets are demanding faster and more decisive portfolio moves, with M&A the most visible lever. Insurance executives need to run M&A, divestitures, and reinsurance as a single capital allocation portfolio. Every transaction or exit must reinforce a simple investor story — protecting the core, accelerating growth in advantaged segments, or de-risking earnings.
3. Design for turbulence and regional regulatory shocks
Treat geopolitics and regional regulation (such as data and AI localization requirements) as design constraints rather than tail risks. Embed them into a regional structure and a faster, nimbler scenario-planning exercise.
Trade fragmentation, more interventionist industrial policies, sanctions, and data sovereignty requirements now shape where insurers can deploy capital, technology, and talent. Insurance CEOs need to design an organization that can operate through repeated shocks while retaining global and regional flexibility. Regionalization does not mean isolation: establish inter-region feedback loops and the ability to rapidly transfer expertise from region to region.
4. Decide your role in the asset-management-led insurer model
The insurance balance sheet is now a global funding platform for private assets. Decide what roles to play in this ecosystem — keep building, partner, or exit — and revamp governance accordingly.
The asset-management-led insurer model is entering a new phase of scale and complexity. CEOs must decide their play in this landscape and make it clear internally and externally: continue building asset-led capabilities, partner with asset managers and investors, or step back and refocus the balance sheet elsewhere. Across all paths, governance must be upgraded so returns, fees, and risks are transparent and independently challenged.
5. Seize the AI infrastructure buildout opportunity
The acceleration of AI is driving a once-in-a-generation build-out of physical infrastructure, encompassing data centers, power generation, grid upgrades, and cooling systems. This creates a significant opportunity for insurers, reinsurers, and brokers — but requires deliberate focus. Some will win as end-to-end underwriters; others as capital partners; intermediaries can create value by packaging capacity, services, and data into holistic solutions.
Integrate offerings to serve hyperscalers’ and infrastructure developers’ needs across risk, capital, and services.
6. Reorganize around evolving insurance customer needs
Shift from incremental product enhancements to integrated, tech-enabled solutions (blending first- and third-party offerings) that address large, unmet customer needs — supported by a model that may disrupt existing profit and losses (P&Ls).
Market conditions across property and casualty (P&C) and life are becoming more challenging, while customer needs are becoming more specific and dynamic.
A “solutions layer” — cross-functional teams accountable for defined customer problems — can assemble integrated offerings and be accountable for measurable customer and economic results.
7. Make financial wellness and retirement a real business
Move beyond products and pilots to build scaled, integrated propositions using AI to simplify, connect, and personalize offerings.
For years, financial wellness and retirement have been at the center of industry debates, yet customer solutions have continuously fallen short. Insurance CEOs must treat financial wellness and retirement as its own business, and make an explicit choice about the role their organization will play in the ecosystem.
Winning solutions might start with a small number of outcome-based journeys and build an integration layer that connects advice, products, and engagement in a simple, intuitive way, at scale.
8. Reset distribution partnerships around shared outcomes
Use AI, data, and joint venture settings to rebuild bank, broker, and platform partnerships around shared customer outcomes, joint economics, and human-first augmentation — or risk watching new intermediaries step in and steal margin.
Distribution remains the point at which insurers will either create a durable advantage or become commoditized. Many partnerships are governed by legacy agreements that no longer reflect customer behavior, technology capabilities, or economic realities.
Insurance leaders need to shift toward outcome-based partnerships with shared KPIs, joint economics, and co-investments, built around “what’s in it for the customer?” from Day one.
9. Build an AI-native workforce — with HR and IT as co-owners
Integrate HR and technology to upskill at scale, accelerate decisions, and reinvent the talent value proposition to build a competitive advantage and defend from disruptors. AI adoption is increasingly the differentiator between leaders and laggards. Insurance CEOs need to make their CHROs and CIOs joint architects of building an AI-native workforce, with shared accountability for adoption quality and business outcomes. Work needs to be redefined so AI handles at-scale tasks, analysis, and synthesis, while humans remain accountable for decisions.
10. Redesign the end-to-end insurance operating model for hyperspeed
Simplify structures, shorten decision paths, and align incentives with each business’s objectives for a world where cycles are faster, talent is mobile, and AI is everywhere.
Incumbents are assailed from many fronts in the age of acceleration, with geopolitics, private capital, and AI as the main catalysts. Insurance CEOs have a rare opportunity to redesign their operating models end-to-end, with AI as an accelerator rather than an overlay. Shorter paths to decision-making and more effective feedback loops, backed by an AI-powered insights engine, have become a necessity to win.
