Insurance firms are shifting AI deployment from isolated underwriting functions towards enterprise-wide rollouts spanning customer service, claims management, product development, and marketing. GlobalData's July 2026 survey reveals that whilst underwriting remains the leading use case at 34.4%, its dominance has contracted by 11.4% year-on-year, with customer service now claiming 20.4% of expected adoption focus. Product development showed the strongest growth trajectory, rising 8.9% annually, signalling that insurers view AI as a lever for competitive advantage across the entire value chain rather than a single operational bottleneck. This represents a fundamental recalibration: the industry is moving from point solutions to integrated systems designed to improve customer engagement, accelerate innovation cycles, and enhance operational resilience simultaneously.
For CX teams, this expansion carries immediate implications. Customer service's ascent to second place in AI investment priorities means support operations will increasingly compete for resources and governance frameworks alongside claims and underwriting functions—a shift that demands CX leaders articulate clear ROI metrics and integration pathways with existing platforms like Zendesk or Freshdesk. The question becomes whether your current infrastructure can absorb AI capabilities that span both inbound support and outbound marketing automation, or whether siloed implementations will fragment the customer journey. Insurers pursuing true enterprise deployment will need to reconcile AI governance across disparate teams, which raises a secondary concern: as job displacement accelerates in contact centres, CX professionals must position themselves as orchestrators of human-AI workflows rather than operators of legacy systems.
The maturation of AI capabilities has exposed a critical dependency: successful enterprise rollout hinges on cross-functional alignment between underwriting, product, claims, and customer service teams. This integration challenge is not primarily technical—it is organisational. CX teams that fail to embed themselves early in enterprise AI governance discussions risk inheriting systems designed without customer-centric constraints, resulting in fragmented experiences and compliance friction. Conversely, those who lead the conversation around customer data governance, consent management, and transparency can shape AI implementations that strengthen rather than undermine customer trust.
AI adoption expands beyond underwriting as insurers accelerate enterprise-wide rollout, GlobalData finds The Intermediary
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