News
State Insurance Regulators Share Coordinated Work to Oversee Markets During Meeting with U.S. Treasury
Members of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) met today with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to share perspectives on the intersection of private credit and insurance and provide insight into state insurance regulators' oversight of insurers' risk management and investment practices as states continue working to guarantee insurers can keep their promises to policyholders.
State insurance regulators have long taken concrete steps to keep pace with insurers' increased exposure to private credit and other market developments. Today's meeting provided a forum to highlight how their collaboration and coordination advances this work.
"As markets rapidly evolve, the U.S. state-based system of insurance regulation continues to lead," said Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation Director and NAIC President-Elect Elizabeth Dwyer.
"We appreciated the opportunity to meet with Secretary Bessent and share how state insurance regulators are leveraging effective oversight and enhancing risk-mitigation frameworks to promote stable markets and deliver strong outcomes for consumers."
"This Administration is a strong supporter of the state-based system of insurance regulation and supervision, and I appreciate the work that each of you do every day in your states to protect American consumers. Like all of you, my team at Treasury is monitoring the transformation of the U.S. life insurance industry and trends in private credit. I look forward to our continued engagement as we monitor the developments in both markets," said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in reference to state insurance regulators and their work.
AI start-ups capture record 95.2% of insurtech funding – Gallagher Re
AI-focused start-ups have taken a record 95.2% of global InsurTech venture funding, claiming all 10 of the quarter's biggest deals and pushing the sector into its strongest back-to-back stretch in nearly four years, Gallagher Re said in its latest Global InsurTech Report.
Total funding reached $1.63 billion in the first quarter of 2026, easing from $1.67 billion in the previous quarter. The two quarters together mark the sector's best showing since Q3 2022, breaking a long run of quarterly totals stuck near the $1 billion mark.
The rebound caps a punishing downcycle for InsurTech. Annual funding peaked at $15.8 billion in 2021, then collapsed to $7.10 billion in 2022, $4.50 billion in 2023, and a low of $4.25 billion in 2024, Gallagher Re's earlier reports show.
Financial Results
Swiss Re delivers a net income of USD 1.5 billion for the first quarter
Swiss Re achieves USD 1.5 billion net income in Q1 2026, reflecting strong business unit performance and investment contributions.
- Property & Casualty Reinsurance (P&C Re) delivers net income of USD 754 million; combined ratio of 79.5% 1
Swiss Re achieved a net income of USD 1.5 billion and a return on equity (ROE) of 23.6% for the first quarter of 2026. The result was driven by increased contributions from all Business Units, supported by low natural catastrophe experience and a strong investment contribution.
Swiss Re's Group Chief Executive Officer Andreas Berger said: "Our first-quarter performance shows strong earnings generation, reflecting the strategic actions taken in recent years to reinforce our businesses. In a more challenging market environment, we are focused on active cycle management in our P&C businesses, as well as underwriting discipline and efficiency across the Group."
Liberty Mutual Insurance Reports First Quarter Results
Liberty Mutual Holding Company Inc. and its subsidiaries (collectively "LMHC" or the "Company") reported net income attributable to LMHC of $2.052 billion for the three months ended March 31, 2026, versus income of $1.025 billion for the same period in 2025.
"We posted excellent first-quarter results, with net income attributable to LMHC of $2.1 billion and a consolidated combined ratio of 88.2%," said Tim Sweeney, Liberty Mutual Chairman & Chief Executive Officer.
"The 8.4-point combined ratio improvement was driven by significantly lower catastrophe losses, while our underlying combined ratio of 84.1% reflects the continued strength of our core underwriting franchise. With the strongest balance sheet in our history, we have the financial foundation and the discipline to pursue profitable growth in increasingly competitive markets."
Root Says AI-Native Insurance Model Drove Record Quarterly Profit
Root Inc. reported record profitability in the first quarter of 2026 as the auto insurer expanded its AI-driven underwriting systems, embedded insurance partnerships, and automated distribution infrastructure.
The company reported $36 million in net income during the quarter, nearly double the prior year period, alongside a 91.4% net combined ratio and approximately 47% annualized return on equity, according to its Q1 2026 shareholder letter.
Root said its technology stack allows the company to make “granular real-time pricing, underwriting, and marketing decisions based on AI and machine learning.” The insurer also described its long-term goal as building a “fully automated, AI-based, closed-loop insurance platform” spanning pricing, claims, underwriting, and acquisition.
The company’s positioning reflects broader efforts across insurance to automate underwriting and claims infrastructure using AI systems, an area seeing increased investment across carriers and startups alike.
Commentary/Opinion
Uninsured Driver Problem Isn't What You Think | Insurance Thought Leadership
One in five. That's roughly how many drivers in states like Florida get behind the wheel without insurance, according to the Insurance Research Council's most recent data.
The standard explanation is economic. Coverage costs are often too much, so some people go without.
The policy response follows: steeper penalties, higher surcharges for lapsed drivers trying to come back. The diagnosis is not wrong, exactly. But it is incomplete in one critical respect: it treats the uninsured rate as something that happens to the insurance industry, rather than something the insurance industry has, in meaningful part, produced. I'd argue that a clear look at how non-standard auto products are designed in Florida suggests the latter and that the implication, for those of us who build these products, is more uncomfortable than the industry has typically been willing to acknowledge. FULL ARTICLE
Seth Henderson serves as the senior vice president of insurance product and growth at Clearcover
The Insurance Affordability Squeeze: Why Auto Carriers Are at an Inflection Point
For many drivers, auto insurance has quietly become one of the fastest‑rising household expenses—one they can no longer absorb without trade‑offs.
Executive Summary
The affordability challenge confronting auto insurers is not cyclical noise; it reflects structural shifts in risk, cost and consumer expectations, observe KPMG’s Sean Vicente and Lenny LaRocco.
Here, they describe enhanced modeling, more granular risk assessment and sustained performance discipline as measures carriers can take to shape outcomes, even as external pressures persist. A combination of more volatile weather, higher repair costs and a tougher litigation environment has pushed loss severity higher across the auto insurance market. Together, these pressures have driven premiums to record highs across multiple lines of the insurance sector. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while motor vehicle insurance has stabilized over recent months, it still remains at elevated rates relative to pre‑pandemic levels.
Why most insurance quotes are abandoned — and how insurers can fix it
Booking a flight online takes minutes. Ordering a taxi takes seconds. Even applying for a loan can now be done in a handful of taps. Buying insurance, by contrast, often feels like stepping back a decade. The process slows, the questions multiply, and what should be simple quickly becomes something to work through rather than complete.
That friction has consequences. Across life, health and other lines, insurance quotes are abandoned long before completion. Customers drop out early, hesitate at key moments, or disengage entirely when the process begins to drag.
This is supported in the data, as 84% of insurance leads abandon their quotes in the initial forays of the process. For insurers, this means that quoting has ultimately become a point of quiet failure.
The problem is not new. But the shift to digital has made it harder to ignore.
At its core, insurance has always depended on information. The more an insurer knows about an applicant, the more precisely it can assess and price risk. But that logic now collides with a different reality. Customers expect immediacy, relevance and control.
Announcements
Property & Liability Resource Bureau (PLRB) Launches New PLRB Advanced Coverage Education (PACE) Designation to Strengthen Claims Expertise Across the Property and Casualty (P&C) Insurance Industry
The Property & Liability Resource Bureau (PLRB) announced the launch of the PLRB Advanced Coverage Education (PACE) program, a new professional designation designed to help claims professionals deepen their coverage knowledge, strengthen decision-making skills, and support more consistent and accurate claims outcomes.
PACE provides a structured learning path that blends foundational insurance education with opportunities for specialization and advanced claims training. The program was developed in response to member company feedback and the industry’s growing need for accessible, high-quality education that supports both individual career growth and organizational performance.
“PACE reflects PLRB’s long-standing commitment to delivering practical, high-value education for claims professionals,” said Bryan Falchuk, President & CEO. “This designation gives professionals a clear pathway to build their expertise, strengthen their claims skills, and demonstrate their knowledge to employers and peers, ultimately enabling them to contribute more effectively to their teams and policyholders.”
AI in Insurance
Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs Launch Enterprise AI Services Firm
Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs said May 4 they have formed a new AI-native enterprise services firm that will work with companies to bring Anthropic’s Claude into core business operations.
The standalone entity will have Anthropic engineering and partnership resources embedded directly within its team. The new firm is also backed by a consortium of alternative asset managers including General Atlantic, Leonard Green, Apollo Global Management, GIC and Sequoia Capital.
The firm will draw on the consortium’s network of hundreds of portfolio companies as an initial customer base, alongside independent companies seeking to deploy Claude.
The lineup of investors overlap with the collision repair and claims ecosystem. Hellman & Friedman’s current portfolio includes a majority stake in Caliber Collision, the largest collision repair multi-shop operator in North America, and a minority investment Belron, the parent of Safelite Auto Glass. Mitchell International, the collision estimating and claims management software platform, is a former H&F investment. Leonard Green & Partners holds a minority stake in Caliber, and Goldman Sachs is among the banks working with Caliber on a confidentially filed initial public offering.
With the new services firm explicitly built to deliver Claude to portfolio companies, several of the largest financial sponsors in the auto aftermarket now share an interest in accelerating AI deployment across their holdings.
Patrick Healy, CEO of Hellman & Friedman, pointed to near-term value for portfolio companies.
“This is a rare convergence: massive market need, the unmatched AI technical capability of Anthropic, and a consortium of investors with the reach to scale fast,” Healy said. “The near-term value to our portfolio companies is substantial, and we are excited by the long-term potential to build the definitive enterprise AI services platform.”
The companies did not disclose the firm’s name, headquarters, leadership team, capitalization or expected timeline for engagements with portfolio companies.
CCC: Strong start to 2026, ‘momentum and opportunity’ focused in AI | Repairer Driven News
[ED. NOTE: LOOKING FORWARD TO LEARNING MORE ABOUT NEW AI-ENABLED PRODUCT INNOVATIONS TO BE ANNOUNCED AT CCC INTELLIGENT SOLUTIOS NXT PARTNER CONFERENCE MAY 12-14]
CCC Intelligent Solutions leadership shared during its Q1 2026 earnings call that it has a had a “strong start” this year, touting its AI use cases and continued expansion.
We had a strong start to 2026, driven by continued customer demand and adoption,” said Githesh Ramamurthy, CCC chairman and CEO. “In the first quarter, total revenue grew 12% to $281 million, above the high end of our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA was $120 million, also above the high end of our guidance, and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded approximately 300 basis points year-over-year to 43%.
He also noted that CCC is more than a year past the acquisition of EvolutionIQ, and continues to see “strong momentum across the combined business.”
“These solutions are entirely incremental to our core products, with discrete value propositions and ROI that customers validate through intense piloting and testing, demonstrating both the durability of our core solutions and the rapid adoption of our AI tools,” Ramamurthy said.
“While we are tremendously excited about the growth in our AI products, the benefits of marrying AI with deterministic software are becoming increasingly evident to customers. It’s not an either or, it’s an ‘and.’ Governance and trust are bedrock principles in our industry.”
CCC’s systems process nearly 6 billion transactions per day, “giving customers a battle-tested platform that flexibly handles volume spikes and constant adjustments to their operating rules,” he added.
2026 Outlook/Predictions
The future of insurance 2035 | Deloitte Global
Anticipating change, building resilience, and securing long-term growth
Insurance is entering a decade of accelerated change. Over the years ahead, the insurance sector will face not only significant transformation but a redefinition of industry purpose amidst a convergence of external drivers, including demographic shifts, societal change, rapid advances in AI in insurance and ongoing digital transformation, extreme weather impact and climate volatility, and mounting macroeconomic, regulatory, and geopolitical pressures shaping insurance trends globally.
By 2035, value will move beyond traditional risk transfer toward prevention, resilience, and long‑term financial security. While the sector has remained resilient in recent years, the road ahead is expected to be more challenging as industry megatrends accelerate and intensify. The convergence of these megatrends means that their impact can no longer be looked at in isolation and winning will require the ability to anticipate disruption, adapt quickly, and align offerings to the future needs of individuals, businesses, and societies navigating unprecedented uncertainty across the future of insurance.
This Deloitte Global report explores how insurers can respond to converging megatrends across life & health and property & casualty insurance, anchored in five shifts that will redefine insurance business models over the next decade:
Protection Gaps
Nationwide files trademark for ‘Nationwide Home Warranty’
Nationwidefiled a trademark application for “Nationwide Home Warranty” on May 4, 2026, according to USPTO records.
The application covers “extended warranty services, namely, service contracts” under International Class 036. Nationwide also submitted a disclaimer for the term “Home Warranty.”
As a side note, Extend , a warranties and protection plans startup launched in 2019, is backed by Nationwide. The company has raised over $320 million to date, with Nationwide participating in its Series C round in May 2021.