This piece is by Greg Hanson, Group Vice President and Head of EMEA North, Informatica
The UK insurance market is undergoing significant change. Margins are shrinking, costs of insurance premiums are rising, and regulatory requirements are evolving. At the same time, customers expect faster decisions and smoother communication, regardless of the channel they choose. These conditions are exposing weaknesses in the systems and processes insurers rely on. Nowhere is this more evident than in the growing cost and complexity of managing claims.
Claims costs are rising, squeezing margins
The volume and cost of claims continue to rise. Several factors are driving this. Many households are delaying essential repairs or vehicle maintenance because of the cost of living. Those delays turn routine issues into severe losses. In health and life insurance, NHS backlogs are pushing more people toward private cover, straining claims budgets. Fraud adds another layer of pressure and now costs UK insurers more than £1 billion a year.
Together, these forces put pressure on margins and expose a deeper operational weakness. Insurers need an accurate, timely and more connected view of their data to understand risk, manage claims effectively and respond at the speed the market now demands.
Yet many insurers lack this level of visibility. Data sits in multiple systems, split across teams and locked in different formats. Processes designed years ago are being pushed to their limits. This leaves underwriters frequently working with partial or inconsistent information, which makes it difficult to evaluate risk with confidence. A customer who appears low risk in one system can look very different in another. Even small data gaps can lead to pricing decisions that jeopardise performance in an already competitive market.
Disconnected systems slow everything down
Fragmented information forces insurers into manual workarounds that erode agility and scale. Teams piece together datasets, double check figures and recreate reports from scratch because no single source of truth exists. These tasks are slow and impossible to scale. They also make it hard to react to emerging risks or sudden moves in the market. As insurers handle more data than ever before, these limitations are becoming impossible to ignore.
Regulation adds further strain. Consumer Duty, IFRS 17 and new expectations for AI oversight require insurers to demonstrate exactly how their data is captured, managed and used. Many insurers cannot meet these standards with confidence because their information is dispersed across incompatible systems. This makes reporting a heavy burden and tracing data back to its origin becomes a challenge. Regulators expect greater clarity, and insurers must prove the accuracy, traceability and audit readiness of their data. Meeting these demands requires information that is consistent, connected and available in real time, which is why so many insurers are rethinking how data flows through their organisations.
Governed, connected data becomes the true differentiator
The insurers moving ahead are those building governed, connected data ecosystems, designed to surface real-time, trusted insight. Metadata-driven lineage and traceability are essential for maintaining reliability by ensuring transparency, compliancy and accountability. And when this holistic, governed data is accessible across underwriting, claims, fraud and compliance, teams can act earlier and with greater certainty.
In claims and fraud, the impact is immediate. Fraud detection becomes more proactive, as historical claims, behavioural profiles and external datasets can be analysed together. Patterns become visible much sooner, giving investigators the context they need at the point of decision and reducing losses over time.
Compliance gains from this approach as well. When information is governed consistently and supported by transparent, auditable processes, reporting becomes faster and more reliable. Data lineage plays a key role here. It provides a clear trace of where information originates and how it changes as it moves through systems. As AI becomes more embedded in decision making, insurers that can clearly explain how their models work and what data informs them will be better placed to meet regulatory expectations and maintain trust.
The agentic future
Insurance is one of the industries likely to see early, real-world impact as autonomous agents begin to automate claims handling, risk assessment and customer interactions. One insurer, for example, is developing a fraud detection agent that analyses historical claims, identifies patterns and flags anomalies in real time. By drawing on a de-duplicated unified view of customer interactions and claim history, the agent can distinguish genuine claims from suspicious ones, explain the factors behind each alert and route cases to investigators quickly. What’s crucial here is that the workflow is integrated. The agent doesn’t just detect fraud. It learns, explains, and adapts in real time as fraud tactics evolve.
Beyond fraud, many insurers are exploring avatar-based agents that guide customers through claims journeys or provide real-time quotes, offering a more natural, responsive experience without increasing operational load. These developments show how agentic AI, powered by trusted data, can reduce losses, accelerate legitimate claims and improve auditability. But to reap the benefits, insurers need the ‘insurance’ that their data is fit for purpose. Otherwise, autonomous agents risk becoming misinformed and making inconsistent or inappropriate decisions at scale.
A strategy for long-term advantage
The insurers that succeed in this environment will be those that treat data as a strategic asset that supports every part of the value chain. Integration, automation and strong governance unlock insights that help organisations respond faster, reduce losses, price more accurately and build stronger relationships with customers and regulators.
This period of pressure is also one of possibility, with agentic AI poised to transform everything from customer interactions, to claims and investigation workflows. Insurers that invest in modern, data driven capabilities today will be better equipped to navigate
uncertainty, protect margins and make decisions that stand up to scrutiny. The future belongs to those ready to turn information into intelligence and intelligence into action.
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