Allianz has overtaken AXA to claim the top spot in the Evident AI Index for Insurance, a global benchmarking report that tracks AI maturity across 30 of the largest carriers in North America and Europe. The June 2026 findings signal that the gap between early movers and the rest of the sector is no longer closing - it is beginning to harden into a structural competitive divide.
The report, published by intelligence firm Evident Insights, scores insurers on four pillars: Talent, Innovation, Leadership, and Transparency. Allianz's rise was driven by broad-based improvement across all four, with its lead clearest in talent and innovation. AXA holds second place, while Manulife, Zurich, and Liberty Mutual round out the top five. Among US-headquartered carriers, Travelers ranks seventh overall and leads in documented AI outcomes among domestic property and casualty writers.
The compounding advantage
The Index's central argument is that early movers are not simply ahead - they are pulling further ahead. Allianz and AXA built their AI foundations before generative AI became a mainstream topic, and those foundations are now producing compounding returns, a pattern that is reshaping how insurers approach AI for Insurance. Allianz employs the industry's largest AI specialist workforce, roughly 28% larger than AXA's, and has invested in enterprise-wide training at a scale few peers can match.
Its AI Run program, a 12-week generative AI and prompting curriculum, reached more than 150,000 employees across 70 countries. The DataXcellence initiative has supported over 35,000 employees in data literacy and analytics, and AI education now extends to the company's Supervisory Board. In innovation, Allianz has climbed from fourth place in 2025 to lead the sector in research and patents, registering more than 900 AI use cases worldwide across underwriting, claims, fraud detection, and customer service.
The company's Nemo platform, launched last November, is the most advanced example of agentic AI deployment among the 30 carriers studied. It coordinates seven specialized agents that handle food spoilage claims end-to-end, from customer photo submission through settlement, with modules verifying storm data, checking policy coverage, assessing fraud risk, executing payment, and logging decisions for regulatory compliance.
The productivity ceiling
Across 65 publicly disclosed AI use cases with reported outcomes, productivity gains dominate - they appear in 75% of deployments. Revenue uplift shows up in just 2%. Claims management accounts for 28% of disclosed use cases, followed by internal process operations at 20% and underwriting and pricing at 17%. These are workflows where baselines are established and improvements can be measured relatively quickly.
The larger financial leverage lies elsewhere. Claims typically represent 60% to 80% of premium income, so even modest improvements in risk selection, pricing accuracy, fraud detection, and claims adjudication carry significant financial impact. Only 8% of disclosed use cases currently show AI improving decision quality across connected workflows, but that share is growing fastest among the top-10 carriers. The tools exist, the report suggests, but confidence to deploy them in core underwriting decisions lags behind the investment.
Zurich's rise
Zurich climbed eight places from 12th to fourth - the largest year-on-year gain of any insurer in the Index. The advance was driven primarily by talent growth across all capability categories, with AI Development roles now comprising 44% of its AI talent base. The company has invested in a £1.3 million AI apprenticeship program in the UK covering ethics, governance, accountability, and practical applications.
Underlying that growth is a platform strategy. ZurichIQ is a modular generative AI platform now live across multiple markets and embedded in claims, underwriting, legal, and employee productivity functions. The suite includes AgentIQ for agents and brokers, GuidelineIQ for underwriting adherence, ClaimsIQ for coverage and fraud detection, and VoiceIQ for service center performance.
What the rankings mean for the US market
The Index relies exclusively on publicly available data - job postings, research publications, patent filings, earnings calls, press releases - and scores companies against 68 individual indicators. That methodology limits the self-reporting bias common in technology adoption surveys. For US carriers, the findings land as the regulatory environment tightens. By early 2026, 23 states and Washington, D.C. had adopted the NAIC's model bulletin on AI use in insurance. New York's Department of Financial Services enacted Circular Letter No. 7, requiring insurers to establish governance frameworks and explain how AI factors into underwriting and pricing decisions.
Only three of the 30 insurers in the Index have disclosed enterprise-level AI return on investment. Manulife reported CA$300 million in realized AI enterprise value in fiscal 2025 and projects CA$1 billion by 2027. Intact Financial reported CA$200 million in annual benefits, projecting more than CA$500 million by 2030. Generali disclosed €100 million in bottom-line run-rate impact, with a revised target of more than €350 million by 2027. The rest of the sector, the Index finds, is still measuring AI by process metrics rather than financial outcomes.
Why this matters for insurance professionals
The report makes clear that the AI gap in insurance is not a temporary lag - it is becoming a durable competitive moat. Carriers that have invested in responsible AI infrastructure are better positioned to handle tightening regulation. Those still in pilot mode face a narrowing window to build capabilities that compound, especially as agentic AI begins to move from assisting decisions to executing entire sequences in underwriting and claims. The leaders are already measuring financial outcomes, not just process improvements. For the rest, closing that measurement gap is the first step toward closing the competitive one.
The full Evident AI Index for Insurance: Key Findings Report, June 2026, is available at evidentinsights.com.
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