The future of insurance will be orchestrated, not built

About this event

The insurance industry’s enthusiasm for AI is no longer theoretical. We have seen increasingly in the past year that insurers are keen to take advantage of agentic AI point solutions, deploying hundreds (or thousands) of AI models, agents and workflows across their organizations.

But scale introduces a new problem.

With an influx of transformative tools on the market, AI integrations can risk being deployed in silos: a claims bot here, an underwriting model there. Governance often becomes an afterthought until something breaks – in unexplainable decisions, unchecked model drift, or shadow AI. This fragmented oversight erodes trust. Furthermore, after adoption, leaders struggle to quantify value, prioritize use cases, or align investment to prove measurable outcomes.

So, how do we avoid this very modern problem and reach enterprise-scale deployment with a clear, structural architecture?

The next competitive advantage will come from orchestration – a structural layer that connects systems, aligns workflows and creates tangible decision coherence across the enterprise.

In New York, InsTech brought together ServiceNow, INSTANDA, Concirrus, Naitiv & hyperexponential to explore what this orchestration layer looks like in practice and how insurers can move from pilot to production without rebuilding their businesses from scratch.

In this event, we touched on:

Why cross-functional coordination creates more value than isolated AI point solutions.
The benefits of a core orchestration layer spanning policy, claims, and finance to enable integration without whole system replacement.
How composable, no-code platforms accelerate modernization while preserving underwriting and claims expertise.
Why incremental transformation is more effective than large-scale rebuild programs.
The case for a centralized governance hub such as ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower in providing visibility, explainability, compliance mapping, and lifecycle management across AI systems.
The skills and delivery capabilities required to implement orchestration successfully in regulated insurance environments.

Our sponsors delved into their overarching solutions:

ServiceNow outlined the business case for enterprise AI governance through its AI Control Tower: a centralized oversight layer providing model inventory, fairness auditing, explainability, drift detection and regulatory mapping.
As a delivery partner, Naitiv addressed the implementation reality: from architecture and platform expertise to integrating legacy systems and aligning customer and employee workflows.
INSTANDA explored how a modern, AI enabled composable policy administration platform is enabling clients like Private Client Select (PCS) to transform underwriting and service quality in its ultra-high-net-worth portfolio.
Concirrus examined how technology can enhance underwriting work, how underwriting roles are evolving in this new AI enabled world, what should remain human-led, and what foundations need to be in place to support more confident, connected underwriting decisions.
Hyperexponential focused on what actually drives underwriting performance: profit – showing how leading carriers achieve measurable gains in risk selection, capacity deployment and underwriting margin, with practical examples of targeting the right business and avoiding unprofitable segments.

The future will not be built system by system. It will be conducted and orchestrated.

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Programme

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Arrival and lunch

2:00 pm - 2:10 pm

Welcome address

Robin Merttens, Executive Chairman, InsTech
Nigel Walsh, Global Head of Insurance, ServiceNow

2:10 pm - 2:30 pm

Orchestrating the future of ultra-high-net-worth insurance

PCS transformed its ultra-high-net-worth insurance business by moving to a modern digital ecosystem. In this session, INSTANDA and PCS walked through the technology selection process, why PCS chose INSTANDA as its policy administration platform, and what it took to design, implement and migrate data across a complex, highly personalized product portfolio serving over 5,000 brokers – including how no-code, composable platforms enable that kind of scale.

Natalee Bailey, VP of Applications, PCS
Moderated by: Tori Sarmiento, Senior Sales Executive, INSTANDA

2:30 pm - 2:50 pm

AI in insurance: balancing signal, noise and underwriter needs

The insurance industry is moving into its third wave of underwriting technology – AI ingestion and underwriting copilots – but a gap persists between what vendors build and what underwriters actually need. Many pilots stall, automation and decision intelligence are often conflated, and it remains unclear which solutions will endure. This session brought together Concirrus and a senior carrier underwriting leader to assess what is genuinely improving outcomes and where insurers should focus next.

Sujatha Raju, Chief Technology Officer, Mission US
Julie Eichenseer, Managing Director, Insurance Technology Consulting, EY
Paul Ritter, SVP of Underwriting & Co-Founder, Lynx Specialty
Moderated by Jake Remes, Head of Sales, Americas, Concirrus

2:50 pm - 3:05 pm

The origin story of Naitiv

Naitiv is an AI-native ServiceNow consultancy built specifically for insurance, combining business advisory, platform architecture, and legacy systems expertise in a single operating model. In this session, we heard the origin story – why the founders saw a gap in how insurers approach platform transformation, how they designed ServiceNow as an orchestration layer rather than a replacement for core systems, and what they have learned about embedding AI into insurance workflows from day one.

Jon Reynolds, CEO, Naitiv
Toan Huynh, Board Chair, Naitiv
Moderated by: Steve Dowling, Head of Insurance GTM – Americas, ServiceNow

3:05 pm - 3:45 pm

Refreshment and networking break

3:45 pm - 4:00 pm

From architecture to workflow - making implementation real

Many insurers have defined target architectures and transformation strategies, but progress often slows when moving from design to execution. This session brought together speakers from Naitiv, ServiceNow, and a leading insurer to examine how architectural decisions are translated into working processes across underwriting, servicing, and claims. It explored how workflows are structured, how systems are connected and how data is used in day-to-day operations – alongside the practical challenges of governance, change management, and aligning technology delivery with business priorities.

Bill Devine, Managing Partner, Insurance, Naitiv
Nigel Walsh, Global Head of Insurance, ServiceNow

4:00 pm - 4:20 pm

Optimize for profit, not AI: what separates the winners

Everyone is talking about AI, but underwriting leaders are judged on profit. This session showed what winning with AI actually looks like, with a focus on measurable improvements in risk selection, capacity deployment, and underwriting margin. You learnt how leading carriers use AI to target the right business, avoid unprofitable segments, and build a repeatable engine for underwriting profit – supported by real examples and a practical framework for refocusing AI initiatives on commercial impact.

Melissa McDermott, SVP, Global Chief Actuary Insurance, Everest
Moderated by Richard Gunn, President, hyperexponential

4:20 pm - 4:40 pm

Insurance 2030 - Where Will We Be?

AI is changing the way insurance is underwritten and delivered. This session looked at the nature and speed of those changes across underwriting, claims, and customer service. The panel shared their perspectives on where the industry will be in the short and medium term, focusing on the areas most likely to see the greatest disruption.

Bill Devine, Managing Partner, Insurance, Naitiv
Ray Lynch, COO, K2 Cyber
Craig Linton, Head of US Underwriting Management for Cyber Risks, Beazley
Moderated by: Robin Merttens, Executive Chairman, InsTech

4:40 pm - 4:55 pm

Why insurers need strong AI operations governance

Insurers are scaling AI adoption, but the unpredictable nature of AI models introduces risks to reputation and confidence. In this session, we discussed EY’s recent report on why strong AI operations and governance frameworks are now essential – covering centralized oversight, visibility across AI projects, and the practical steps insurers need to move from experimentation to enterprise deployment with confidence.

Jeff Wenger, Managing Director, EY
Moderated by: Nigel Walsh, Global Head of Insurance, ServiceNow