Alianças e parcerias
Two new ways Kyndryl is helping customers maximize their SAP results
artigo
29 de jan de 2026
By Ralitsa Nenkova, Global Insurance Leader, Consult Partner and Vice President at Kyndryl
The insurance game has always been about risk. But today’s insurers face unprecedented pressures from all sides, including the most frequent and severe natural catastrophes in recent memory, ever-tightening domestic and global regulations and persistent and increasingly sophisticated fraud threats. All of this is happening just as many in the industry work to modernize their legacy IT systems to stay ahead of the pack.
Industry pressures continue to force change as they reshape resiliency requirements and underscore the need for innovation driven by AI. Today’s insurance industry ambition is to transform operational fundamentals rather than pursue incremental improvements to traditional ways of doing business.
The insurance industry is no stranger to innovation. Many insurers have already incorporated sophisticated AI models into their pricing strategies and use telematics to personalize auto insurance premiums. Meanwhile, new products emerging to manage climate-driven volatility. The current scale of change demands greater agility, efficiency and resilience that agentic AI at scale can help deliver.
Why agentic AI matters
Agentic AI advances AI functionality from automating pre-planned workflows to autonomously determining and executing workflows. That’s the shift from “automation” to “autonomous” workflows. By incorporating contextual knowledge into operational workflows, autonomous systems support human decision-making while continuing to learn. For insurers, these capabilities help enable frontline and back-office functions that operate with greater accuracy and speed. In addition to strengthening operational consistency and continuity, agentic AI can help insurers gain visibility across their risk portfolios, automate regulatory reporting and infuse predictive intelligence into detecting threats.
Five strategic approaches to becoming an AI-enabled insurer
Start with the end in mind
Insurers must begin by defining a clear roadmap to incorporating AI into their business operations. It’s not about deploying a specific tool — it’s about targeting outcomes: faster product innovation, superior customer experiences, deeper insights or improved capital efficiency. Once those outcomes are defined, organizations can map a pathway and begin proving value in increments as they collaborate early with governance and security partners.
Treat transformation as business-as-usual
Gone are the days of multi-year transformation projects. Insurers today need quick iterative value demonstrations. Early use cases should simplify complex processes — not so small as to be inconsequential and not so large that they stall progress. Rapid workshops, co-creation with partners and value measurement in days or weeks help build momentum, credibility and organizational confidence.
Modernize technology with AI — not in spite of it
Legacy systems remain one of the greatest barriers to resilience. Rather than replacing them wholesale, insurers can use agentic AI to modernize incrementally: reading older codebases, generating APIs, building orchestration and observability layers and enabling data to be accessed where it lives. This approach leapfrogs traditional modernization and reduces cost, time and risk — while strengthening resilience across IT estates.
Build guardrails to maintain transformational resilience
As AI adoption accelerates, regulatory, compliance and security frameworks must evolve. Insurers should shift from detailed rule-making to designing secure guardrails that enable safe experimentation and enterprise-wide scaling. With quantum-era cyber risks on the horizon, robust resilience planning is essential. Data integrity must be protected not only from breaches, but also from subtle interference that could influence agent behavior and business outcomes.
Forge a culture of AI fluency
Culture influences resilience as much as technology. As roles transform, employees need training, reassurance and hands-on experience with AI tools. Leaders must model this fluency by becoming more technically engaged and detail oriented. Research shows that adaptability as a cultural value increases the likelihood of positive returns on AI investments and underscores the need for leaders who can guide teams through both technical and behavioral change.
Looking ahead
Deployed strategically and skillfully, AI may be able to deliver profound improvements across an insurer’s actuarial functions, underwriting, ESG reporting and operational resilience. Imagine using agentic AI to reduce actuarial timelines and manual rework — thereby allowing actuaries to focus more fully on strategic risk management. Or how about using embedded AI agents to streamline Scope 3 emissions reporting while reducing manual effort and improving data quality? The promise is there!
AI-driven operational enhancements can reinforce broader resilience across the enterprise. Organizations that move quickly will become the industry pacesetters. By embedding AI into their core operations, forward-thinking insurers will develop more innovative products and deliver them faster. These insurers will also provide personalized customer experiences at scale as they operate with enhanced visibility across their risk portfolios. These companies will become the new vanguard of an industry with a deep history of innovation as they anticipate and adapt to an exciting and transformative era.
