s insurtech dead? Was it ever really alive? Who killed insurtech? And what is insurtech, anyway?”
This refrain ran through my head as I entered Jessica Leong’s and Jamie Wilson’s Ratemaking, Product, and Modeling seminar (RPM) session: “Insurtech is Dead. Long Live insurtech.”
I admit I was drawn in more by the catchy title and the fact that I’d enjoyed several of Leong’s presentations in the past and less by having any special knowledge of insurtech. For some time, “insurtech” has been synonymous in my head with “smart devices used in insurance.” Full disclosure: I was very ready to declare smart devices dead.
Unsurprisingly, Leong and Wilson’s session was much more thoughtful than that. Their definition of insurtech was broader: “A technology company focused on working with carriers/MGAs/brokers to improve how insurance is distributed, priced, underwritten, or serviced.” This would include smart devices, data enrichment, distribution platforms, risk assessment, workflow automation, and more.
With that many use cases, what’s all the concern about “death”? One has only to turn to SaaS company valuations in February 2026, where (according to Reuters) over $1 trillion in market capitalization was lost from software stocks.
Generative AI (GenAI) was to blame, of course. After all, if GenAI can vibe code something for you, why do you need to pay another company to serve you software? Do you really need to talk to that insurtech if you can just talk to a GenAI agent?
Leong and Wilson discussed the many strategies companies use to innovate and made the case that actuaries need to care about insurtech and its future for several reasons: competitive pressure, talent and efficiency, data and model sophistication, regulatory and compliance, and strategic influence.
What made me think I should care? Leong and Wilson claimed that “competitors using these [insurtech] tools are gaining advantages … 20–30% faster quote turnaround in commercial lines…”
Another item that will stick with me: “If you (the actuary) don’t shape these decisions, IT or operations will.”
The rest of the session was an open forum with case study prompts, meant to direct the actuary in ways to effectively use insurtech. The prompts asked audience members to consider how much to innovate versus using tried-and-true solutions to explore how you might choose to innovate (GenAI versus IT department), to decide what you will and won’t do (e.g., how important it is to keep your own data secret), and to calculate the potential return on insurtech solutions.
Hearing thoughts from the audience made for an engaging session, and I found Leong and Wilson’s final thoughts to be instructive as well: “Get hands on,” “invest in your own data,” and “get IT involved early.” Those three thoughts resonated with pain points from my own experience, where I’ve seen roadblocks arise from insurtech platforms not playing well with internal systems.
The title of the session was presumably inspired by the late medieval phrase “The king is dead; long live the king,” which was meant to acknowledge the passing of the current king, welcome a new king, and emphasize the undying nature of the office itself. Once I thought about that, I realized just how well the pithy session title applied to insurtech.
Yes, the easy insurtech solutions may go away—maybe we’ll all be using GenAI to generate our dashboards and slides without any external vendor help—but GenAI can’t fly planes to gather and analyze aerial imagery, and it can’t walk into a house to inspect water damage. I’m more convinced than ever that we’re not witnessing the death of insurtech, but rather the emergence of its next phase.