Anthropic's Claude has become the AI model most likely to appear in marquee insurance industry partnership announcements over the past year, but new consumer data and carrier surveys show the real story is more complicated than a single-vendor sweep.
Baldwin Group expanded its enterprise relationship with Anthropic in May, following broker HUB International's decision to roll Claude out across its workforce of more than 20,000 employees. HUB reported an 85% productivity increase in targeted tasks and better than 90% internal user satisfaction. Verisk has since built connectors so underwriters can query loss-cost trends and ISO filing data conversationally inside Claude, and DXC has committed to training tens of thousands of engineers on the model as part of a multi-year partnership naming insurance a priority sector.
New YouGov BrandIndex data suggests those buyers may have been onto something. Among US consumers who have actually used an AI tool, Claude posted the highest net satisfaction score: 59.3, ahead of Apple Intelligence at 57.7, ChatGPT at 53.5, Gemini at 51.3, and Perplexity at 49.0. The score reflects the share of satisfied users minus dissatisfied users, a narrower test than raw market share.
The gap between current and former users
The most revealing split in the YouGov data is between people still using a product and those who have stopped. Among current users, satisfaction runs high across the board: DeepSeek edges out Claude 76.4 to 76.0, with Apple Intelligence at 75.1, Perplexity at 73.4, and ChatGPT at 72.5.
But lapsed users tell a different story. ChatGPT's satisfaction score among former users falls to -2.8, a swing of 75.3 points and the widest gap of any brand tracked. Gemini drops from 69.7 to 10.7. Claude and Apple Intelligence retain far more residual goodwill, with former-user scores of 30.4 and 33.5 respectively.
For an industry that has spent two years bolting generative AI onto underwriting, claims, and customer service workflows, that gap is a cautionary note. A model that scores well on day one but leaves users dissatisfied after months of production use is a different procurement risk than one that holds up over time. Raw popularity rankings and pilot demos will not surface that distinction.
Where carriers are actually placing bets
The headline deals tell one story. Carrier technology stacks tell a messier one. A survey of national and regional property-casualty and life carriers by IA Capital Group, reported in May, found OpenAI's technology present in about nine out of every ten carrier stacks, frequently arriving through Microsoft Copilot, which showed up separately in 27% of stacks.
Anthropic had meaningful reach at 55%, but typically as a secondary model layered alongside OpenAI rather than a primary replacement. Google's Gemini did not turn up in a single surveyed stack. The same survey found 64% of deployments are internal-only, 36% route AI-drafted output through a staff member before it reaches a customer, and just 18% let AI act directly in front of policyholders.
That picture matches what a June model-by-model guide for brokerages recommends: GPT-5.5 or Claude for analytical, document-heavy drafting where accuracy carries compliance risk; Microsoft Copilot as the operational layer for firms already embedded in Microsoft 365; and Gemini or xAI's Grok as narrower, situational tools. The Claude deals making headlines and the ChatGPT/Copilot combination running underneath most carrier operations are not necessarily competing for the same job.
The cost of a wrong bet
Average deal size for insurance AI transactions reached $23.23 million in the second quarter of 2026, the highest level since late 2021, according to market tracking from ScienceSoft. Pricing structures are also less straightforward than vendor websites suggest. Microsoft's advertised $30-per-seat Copilot Business tier runs to roughly $42.50 per user per month once the mandatory Microsoft 365 base subscription is factored in, two to four times the cost of a standalone Claude or ChatGPT subscription. Anthropic's enterprise pricing for Claude is not published at all and requires a direct sales conversation.
None of that is unique to insurance, but it matters more in a sector where AI workflows get built around a specific vendor's document handling, context window, and integrations. A carrier that commits budget and retrains staff around one model's quirks is choosing a multi-year relationship, not a monthly subscription.
Why this matters for insurance professionals
For insurance buyers, the YouGov data cuts two ways. Carriers experimenting with distribution built on AI chat interfaces have gravitated toward ChatGPT: Spanish digital insurer Tuio became the first carrier to launch inside ChatGPT's app ecosystem in February, and Liberty Mutual followed by midyear with an auto-quoting app in seven states. But attention now and goodwill later may not point to the same brand. When a model's satisfaction score among lapsed users goes negative while a competitor's stays above 30, the procurement decision is not just about capability, it is about how long the relationship will last. For professionals evaluating AI for Insurance, the practical takeaway is to track both current-user satisfaction and former-user regret, and to plan for a multi-vendor stack rather than betting the entire workflow on one platform.
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