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Understanding the Confidence Gap in AI Adoption for Commercial P&C Insurance

In a recent survey conducted by Convr®, a leading AI underwriting platform specialized for commercial property and casualty (P&C) insurance, a notable disparity has emerged between the swift adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and the strategic clarity surrounding their implementation. This survey, part of the 2026 Convr Insurance Talent and Tech Trends initiative, engaged 211 professionals from the commercial insurance sector, most notably including senior leadership roles like vice presidents and executives.

Key Findings of the Survey

Adoption is Accelerating

The results indicate a clear trend: AI adoption in underwriting tasks is gaining traction in the commercial insurance landscape. Noteworthy statistics from the survey include:

• - 89.5% of respondents anticipate further automation in underwriting tasks in the near future.
• - 70.6% successfully integrated new AI underwriting tools into their workflows in 2025.
• - 65.9% plan to expand these offerings with additional AI tools in 2026.
• - 53.6% have introduced AI into at least one production underwriting workflow.

Despite the rapid increase in AI adoption, there is a lack of confidence in the strategic frameworks guiding this transformation. Only 20.4% of leaders express high levels of confidence in their organization’s AI strategy, with more than 40% placing themselves in the lower half of the confidence spectrum.

The Need for a Strategy

Industry executives recognize that the swift deployment of AI tools without a supportive strategy poses significant risks. John Stammen, CEO of Convr, emphasized this point by stating, "The industry has crossed a threshold... What our survey reveals is that while carriers are moving quickly to deploy AI tools, many are doing so without the strategic framework to ensure those investments deliver lasting business outcomes."

This misalignment represents both the primary risk and an immense opportunity for the commercial P&C insurance market. The carriers that bridge the gap between AI adoption and effective strategy may well shape the underwriting landscape for the next decade.

Reasons for Urgency in AI Adoption

The survey also illuminated key operational challenges that drive the urgency for more robust AI frameworks:

• - Manual Data Entry: Cited by 35.1% of respondents, this outdated practice hampers efficiency.
• - Legacy Technology: 27.5% of professionals reported that aging systems impede progress.
• - Multiple Submission Data Sources: 24.6% indicated this complexity slows down underwriting processes.

Compounding these issues is the fact that 63% of insurers operate within hybrid technology settings that blend legacy systems with cloud-based solutions. Consequently, the need for a unified AI underwriting workbench is becoming increasingly essential rather than optional.

Convr's Unique Approach

Convr positions itself to tackle these challenges head-on with its data-first architecture designed specifically for commercial underwriting. Unlike traditional frameworks that may simply integrate AI onto existing legacy systems, Convr’s solution utilizes the Risk Context Engine—a sophisticated intelligence framework. This engine amalgamates structured and unstructured submission data, business logic, and AI models into a single source of truth, ensuring AI decisions are grounded in real underwriting context rather than generic outputs.

Running this engine is Risk 360, Convr’s proprietary insurance data lake that has accrued ten years of historical underwriting data, enhanced continuously by over 2,500 public and private sources and 785 million data points across 87 million companies. This comprehensive data foundation empowers carriers to shift from mere AI adoption to realizing tangible underwriting outcomes.

What Underwriters Really Need

Survey participants highlighted several vital areas for enhancement in their underwriting operations:

• - AI Tool Training: Desired by 47.4% of respondents.
• - Pre-screened and Enriched Submissions: Important for 46.9%.
• - Simplified Data Access: Indicated by 45.5%.

Convr is actively working to support carriers in closing the strategy-to-execution gap in these key areas.

Stammen concluded, “Strategy without execution is theory. Execution without strategy is chaos. Convr was built to give carriers both a clear path from where their underwriting operates today to where it needs to be tomorrow.”

Conclusion

The 2026 Convr Insurance Survey unveils a crucial turning point for the commercial insurance industry: increased AI adoption is imminent, yet the path remains cluttered due to strategic hesitations. As organizations strive to integrate AI into their underwriting processes, developing a cohesive strategy will be essential in leveraging AI's true potential and ensuring sustained business resilience.

For further insights, visit Convr's official site.