Study: For insurers, AI value depends on trust, transparency

Insurers with mature governance are scaling AI with greater confidence – though they don't always follow its advice

• Insurance leads other industries in strategic commitment to AI.
• Insurers gaining value from AI are prioritizing growth and improvement over cost reduction.
• Significant concerns over accuracy, fairness and safety lead users to override AI decisions.

CARY, N.C., Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- For all the discourse about an AI hype bubble, many insurers are already seeing big returns from their investments. But to realize those gains, companies have to trust their AI to provide the right answers – and the AI must show that it warrants that trust.

Those are some of the themes in the second annual Data and AI Impact Report: The New Economics of Trust, a new report from data and AI leader SAS with research insights from IDC. Another takeaway: AI creates more value when companies use it for more ambitious goals. In what the report calls one of its "most durable findings," deploying AI primarily to cut costs is among its least effective uses.

Separating organizations into trustworthy AI "leaders" (those with the strongest governance, data quality and auditability practices) and "laggards," the report finds that the most common goal named by laggards for their AI use is cost savings. Leaders, on the other hand, prioritize operational efficiency, increasing profits and revenue growth.

"Whenever I hear executives say they're investing in AI in order to reduce staff, it tells me that organization has no strategy," said Franklin Manchester, Global Strategic Insurance Advisor at SAS. "Because cutting costs is the least imaginative use for AI. Keep your people, teach them how to use the tools safely, and pursue goals like improved customer experience, expanded market share and stronger resiliency."

Trust, governance and the path to AI value

The report featured several other insights into the insurance industry:

Insurance is the industry most strategically committed to AI – and has the clearest gap between trustworthy AI leaders and laggards. Over half of insurers (54%) have AI operational across several functions or scaled companywide. And insurers that pair AI deployment with trustworthy governance are the ones realizing business value. Among insurance AI leaders, 59% expect strong or high AI ROI, compared with 0% of laggards – the only industry in which laggards produced no strong ROI signal at all.

The contrast is also stark in terms of transparency throughout the organization: 78% of leaders have communicated a responsible AI policy to every employee – versus just 3% of laggards.

Insurance is the first industry to erase the trust gap. Insurers are the first and only industry in which perceived trust in AI exceeds measured capability (by less than 1%).

Investment in AI is rising – and so are expectations. Over 3 in 4 insurers (76%) expect to increase their AI investment in the next year. A large majority (84%) expect a positive return, while over 6 in 10 anticipate that ROI to be 50% or more. And once again, those gains are expected from customer-facing outcomes rather than cost reduction.

Users still have significant concerns about AI being inaccurate, biased or unsafe. The news isn't all positive for trust in AI. Across industries, nearly 80% of respondents say their organizations override more than 10% of decisions by AI agents; nearly a third do so more than 30% of the time. The most frequent reason cited for overriding AI was lack of explanation for its decision (34.5%). But a combined 40% cited either bias/unfairness, factual incorrectness or – alarmingly – decisions they felt were unsafe (8%).

"The concerns over safety are a red flag," said Manchester. "Eight percent may sound like a small number. But when you consider the speed at which AI generates output, and the thousands of decisions made by insurers every day – never mind bankers, healthcare providers and other industries – that small percentage translates to a very large number of actions to be potentially unsafe."

The report is based on a survey conducted in April 2026 of 2,699 decision-makers across 28 countries and five regions, with a focus on banking, insurance, life sciences and the public sector.

"The insurance industry demonstrates that, with AI, ROI follows trust," said Dr. Chris Marshall, VP for Enterprise AI Strategy at IDC. "The insurers who are governing AI well are the ones seeing strong returns. The path forward is to scale AI deployment and user trust in tandem so that reliability and confidence can grow together."

Live webinar: Experts weigh in on trustworthy AI for insurance

The trustworthy AI debate is just beginning. Join experts from SAS, KPMG and Clal Insurance for The State of AI Trustworthiness in Insurance, a live webinar at 9 a.m. ET on Oct. 15. The 60-minute session will explore the technology's real-world value across the insurance business, while also identifying where human beings remain essential. Plus, understand the obstacles along the path to wider AI adoption, and what it takes to overcome them.

About SAS

SAS is a global leader in data and AI, helping organizations make confident decisions with AI they can trust. For decades, SAS has set the standard for delivering software that drives meaningful impact, incorporating deep industry expertise, transparency, and governance. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW^®.

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Trey Whittenton
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SOURCE SAS