Research
Survey Shows Homeowners Warming to DIY Digital Claims, Insurance Processes
Nearly 80% of U.S. homeowners would use their smartphones to document property damage for an insurance claim, according to a new survey that suggests self-service digital tools could play a larger role in future claims handling.
The online survey of more than 1,120 insured homeowners from Xceedance conducted nationwide in July also found that interest in digital tools extends beyond the claims process. More than half of respondents (55.8%) said they would take smartphone photos to obtain a quote for a new policy.
Older respondents, often assumed to be less tech-savvy, were among the most willing to try digital methods. More than 80% of people age 60 and older said they would photograph damage themselves for insurers.COMPLETE ARTICLE
Related: Study: 7% of Monthly Home Ownership Costs Going to Property Insurance
However, the study also highlights a confidence gap when using new technology. The majority (61.9%) of homeowners worry that making a mistake, such as missing or mislabeling a photo, could affect coverage or claim approval, while 46% were unsure what or how much to document. Other concerns included app complexity, time commitment and privacy. To close the gap, 63.7% of respondents said they would welcome clear step-by-step guidance, 48.3% wanted live help and 38.6% said they would rely on their agents for support.
The state of insurance technology, AI in exclusive research. | Digital Insurance
New research from Digital Insurance reveals insights into the technology that carriers, agents and brokers are actively using, as well as the types of solutions that insurance professionals are planning to adopt in the near future.
The "AI Readiness Survey 2025" offers a current look into the state of technology in use throughout the insurance industry, a deep dive on how insurance organizations use or hope to use AI technology and participant responses on how to achieve AI and tech infrastructure readiness.
The DI AI Readiness survey was fielded online during July and August, 2025 among 100 insurance professionals. All respondents have insight into, responsibility for, or oversight into the decisions around what technology is in use at their organization.
Top findings from the report:
- Document management systems and customer-focused tools are the most popular technologies in use by insurance organizations. - In a shift from previous years, staying competitive with peer organizations is one of the goals driving insurer technology strategy.
- Reducing the need for human talent is the least popular goal driving technology strategy.
Results from the report are highlighted below using interactive charts. Mouse over each section for more detail, and click on the chart labels to show or hide sections.
News
Acrisure announces 400 layoffs, citing technology and automation - Business Insurance
Acrisure said Wednesday that it will lay off approximately 400 accounting employees next year, citing advances in technology.
The Grand Rapids, Michigan-based brokerage said that beginning in early 2026, “we will reduce the size of our accounting workforce as the company continues to advance in technology and automation, which are driving systemic change across industries.” The cuts represent about 2% of Acrisure’s staff.
The changes are needed for the company “to remain competitive, strong, and able to deliver what our clients expect from us,” the company said.
Acrisure is automating processes that are currently performed manually, a spokesman said.
Acrisure, the world’s eighth-largest brokerage, with $3.95 billion in 2024 brokerage revenue, has approximately 19,500 employees, including 14,900 in the U.S., 2,000 of whom are based in Grand Rapids.
Financial Results
Property/Casualty Insurance Industry Poised for Growth and Underwriting Profitability in 2025
Personal auto net combined ratio improved from prior estimates.
The U.S. property/casualty (P/C) insurance industry is projected to grow faster than the overall economy in 2025 and is on track to achieve underwriting profitability for a second consecutive year, according to Insurance Economics and Underwriting Projections: A Forward View from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) and Milliman, a collaborating partner.
The report, presented at a members-only briefing today, noted cautious optimism in economic results, pending major shifts in monetary or public policy. “P/C economics and the U.S. economy have outperformed expectations in 2025,” said Michel Léonard, Ph.D., CBE, chief economist and data scientist at Triple-I.
“Even though the tariffs’ impact is less severe than originally expected, the question remains whether the full negative impact has been avoided or simply pushed back to 2026.
“The P/C industry is benefiting from stronger-than-expected underlying growth, pushing premium volume up, and replacement costs that remain below overall inflation,” Léonard added. “But ongoing risks, including tariffs, labor market softening, and persistent inflation, make the 2026 outlook especially important to monitor.”
The P/C industry achieved underwriting profitability in 2024 for the first time since 2020. Profitability is expected again in 2025, though to a lesser extent.
AI in Insurance
SB 53, the landmark AI transparency bill, is now law in California
Senate Bill 53, the landmark AI transparency bill that has divided AI companies and made headlines for months, is now officially law in California.
On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the “Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act,” which was authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-CA).
It’s the second draft of such a bill, as Newsom vetoed the first version — SB 1047 — last year due to concerns it was too strict and could stifle AI innovation in the state. It would have required all AI developers, especially makers of models with training costs of $100 million or more, to test for specific risks. After the veto, Newsom tasked AI researchers with coming up with an alternative, which was published in the form of a 52-page report — and formed the basis of SB 53.
Some of the researchers’ recommendations made it into SB 53, like requiring large AI companies to reveal their safety and security processes, allowing for whistleblower protections for employees at AI companies, and sharing information directly with the public for transparency purposes. But some aspects didn’t make it into the report — like third-party evaluations.
AI already at work in insurance. Do bots comply with state laws? Are they fair to consumers?
A soulless machine finding the rationale to deny your insurance claim or declining to write a policy safeguarding your valuables were among the scenarios Florida lawmakers pondered amid reports of artificial intelligence’s accelerating skills in the complex and hypernuanced world of insurance.
The backdrop to the public-policy discussion is the fast-paced developing AI technology that has launched a thousand scenarios that run the gamut across industries.
Artificial intelligence, according to a Oct. 6 U.S. Senate report, is going to replace 100 million human jobs in the next decade. It’s already reducing company costs and speeding up processes. And it’s going to address the looming national worker shortage.
Amid this disruptive context, state legislators held a committee hearing Oct. 7 with regulatory officials and industry representatives to find out whether new rules are needed to make sure the oncoming revolution won’t hit Floridians where they already hurt — insurance premiums and claims.
“AI — it is kind of a scary proposition,” said Thomas Koval, a retired insurance company executive and current board member of FCCI Insurance Group, a commercial insurer out of Sarasota.
But it’s already in use, lawmakers were told.
InsurTech/M&A/Finance💰/Collaboration
Top insurtech funding rounds, September 2025
There were about 60 funding events in the insurtech sector in September 2025, according to a review by Digital Insurance.
What follows is a selection of these, focusing on those in the insurtech and property & casualty sectors that are part of the venture-capital financing model. (Other funding events, such as private-equity infusions, are included in the overall count.)
A portion of the data was sourced from Crunchbase. Other information, including quotes from investing VCs, comes from company announcements. For our previous edition, which covered August, click here. These updates will continue monthly.
These summaries were crafted using AI and then reviewed by the Digital Insurance editorial team.
Insurity and Faura partner to bring property-level resilience insights to P&C insurers - Reinsurance News
Insurity, a provider of cloud-based software and analytics for insurance carriers, brokers, and MGAs, has entered a strategic partnership with Faura to deliver property-level resilience insights to P&C insurers*.
Faura’s data and analytics into Insurity’s platform, carriers and MGAs gain access to verified, property-specific resilience data directly within their underwriting, pricing, and claims workflows.
The partnership addresses the challenges of underwriting profitably in catastrophe-prone markets. Rather than relying on broad climate models and regional assumptions, Faura enables precise, property-level decision-making, providing up to six times more validated data than traditional inspections and survivability analyses.
By cutting inspection costs by more than half, the collaboration boosts profitability and retention while helping carriers meet evolving climate risk requirements. Homeowners benefit as well, gaining actionable resilience roadmaps and potential premium incentives tied to mitigation.
The partnership strengthens Insurity’s platform with next-generation resilience scoring and data validation, while giving Faura immediate distribution through Insurity’s network of leading carriers.
“With catastrophe risk rising worldwide, insurers can no longer rely on outdated hazard models and inaccurate data,” said Valkyrie Holmes, CEO and Cofounder of Faura. “Our partnership with Insurity ensures that property-level survivability insights flow directly into underwriting workflows, giving carriers the clarity to stay profitable while helping homeowners stay protected.”
The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative and BluePond.AI Join Forces to Modernize Risk Data Exchange Across P&C Insurance
The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative and BluePond.AI Join Forces to Modernize Risk Data Exchange Across P&C Insurance
New AI-powered platform unlocks faster, smarter collaboration between agents, carriers, and reinsurers—eliminating manual workflows and accelerating decisions.
The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative and BluePond.AI announced a strategic partnership to address one of the property and casualty insurance sector’s most persistent challenges: the broken flow of risk data between agents, carriers, and reinsurers.
Together, the organizations are launching a new solution powered by BluePond’s P&C CoPilot platform, enabling more efficient and autonomous underwriting workflows through intelligent automation and multiparty data collaboration – laying the foundation for expansion into additional insurance solution sets across the value chain. The collaboration aims to eliminate manual data handoffs, enable secure multiparty connections, and accelerate the P&C sector’s shift toward more connected operations that ultimately deliver faster, more seamless outcomes for policyholders.
“Our collaboration with BluePond.AI is about more than just technology—it’s about reimagining how the insurance sector accesses and uses data,” said Patrick Schmid, Ph.D., President of The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative. “By enabling intelligent, multiparty data exchange, we’re driving faster, more informed underwriting decisions, improving interoperability, and creating more autonomous workflows within the underwriting process.”
Meanwhile Raises $82M to Scale Bitcoin-Based Life Insurance and Retirement Products
Meanwhile, the first regulated Bitcoin life insurer has raised $82 million in new capital to expand its suite of Bitcoin-denominated savings, life insurance, and annuity products.
The round was co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and Haun Ventures, with participation from Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Stillmark.
Announcing $82M ...Meanwhile, the first regulated Bitcoin life insurer has raised $82 million in new capital to expand its suite of Bitcoin-denominated savings, life insurance, and annuity products.
Regulated Bitcoin Protection
Licensed by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, Meanwhile is the world’s first long-term insurer fully denominated in Bitcoin. The company provides policyholders with BTC-based life insurance, annuities, and savings products, protecting them from currency devaluation and inflation.
“Life insurers have always provided the steady, long-term capital that keeps financial markets moving,” said Zac Townsend, CEO of Meanwhile.
“We’re bringing that same role to Bitcoin—helping families save and protect wealth in BTC, while giving institutions new ways to earn returns and launch Bitcoin-indexed products that are compliant and easy to scale,” said Townsend.
The firm’s Bitcoin assets under management have surged by more than 200%, reflecting growing confidence in BTC as a long-term store of value.
QuoteWell Raises $12 Million to Expand AI-Driven Insurance Brokerage
QuoteWell (Austin, Texas), a wholesale insurance brokerage focused on commercial risks, has raised an additional $12 million in financing to expand its market reach and accelerate development of its AI-powered platform. The funding brings the company’s total capital raised to $32 million.
The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from new investors Brand Foundry Ventures and ClockTower Ventures. Existing investors Goldcrest Capital and Floating Point also joined, along with several angel investors.
QuoteWell plans to use the capital to expand its producer footprint, particularly in the Southeast and West Coast markets, and to deepen investment in its proprietary technology, which combines automation with human underwriting expertise.
“We’ve consistently focused on building a platform that empowers producers to be more efficient and effective, and this new funding will allow us to double down on that strategy,” comments Joey Bouchard, founder and CEO, QuoteWell.
“Our ability to seamlessly fuse the best of technology and human expertise is what sets us apart.”
Legal System Abuse/Social Inflation
US casualty grapples with rising losses amid legal, inflation pressures – Guy Carpenter
The US casualty insurance sector continues to operate in a challenging environment marked by persistent increases in loss severity, according to Guy Carpenter executives Chris Ross (pictured above, left) and Blake Berman (pictured above, right).
The market remains hard, with insurers responding to pressures from legal system abuse and rising economic and medical inflation through a range of strategies focused on pricing, underwriting, policy language, and legislative advocacy.
Legal system abuse has contributed to a 67% rise in assets under management for litigation financing between 2019 and 2024. Over the same period, plaintiff advertising spending has grown by nearly 9% annually.
The cost of care in the US also continues to climb. These factors have led to a 10.5% annual compound increase in the median size of the top 100 verdicts since 2014, a trend that has accelerated in recent years.
The commercial auto insurance segment, a key component of the broader casualty market, illustrates the ongoing financial pressures facing the industry. Over the past two years, net underwriting losses in US commercial auto have exceeded US$10 billion, with 2024 alone accounting for US$4.9 billion in losses.
OEMs & Auto Insurance
State Farm partners with Volvo
State Farm and Volvo Car Financial Services have teamed up to integrate auto insurance into the vehicle purchase process, giving Volvo customers the option to request and buy coverage while shopping for a car.
The collaboration connects buyers with State Farm agents to streamline quoting and offer personalized protection. Both companies say the partnership reflects their shared focus on safety, simplicity, and improving the customer experience.
The news follows the August launch of Volvo Car Insurance Services, the company’s first independent insurance agency in the US. Through partnerships with Progressive, Travelers, The Hartford, and Nationwide, Volvo now offers auto, home, umbrella, and specialty products across select states, all fully integrated into the Volvo Cars App—raising the question of how Volvo will balance distribution among its insurance partners.
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