Ireland's Opportunity To Shape Europe's Insurance Future

By Gary Leyden, CEO, InsTech.ie

Innovation must now be tested, evidenced and defensible.

Insurance across Europe is already modernising under regulatory and technological pressure. According to the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), nearly two-thirds of insurers are now using generative artificial intelligence in some capacity, based on its February 2026 survey. EIOPA has also reported AI being used in underwriting, fraud detection and claims handling across large parts of the non-life market.

The EU AI Act introduces formal requirements around transparency, documentation and oversight for high-risk AI systems. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) raises expectations around ICT risk management, stress testing and third-party oversight. These laws mean insurers must prove their systems are explainable, well governed and resilient before they scale. Innovation must now be tested, evidenced and defensible.

Ireland sits in a distinctive position within this shift. Insurance Ireland states that Ireland is the largest provider of cross-border insurance services in the European Union and a major reinsurance centre within the EU. That matters because many of the decisions made in Ireland affect customers and markets across Europe. The Central Bank of Ireland’s Insurance Corporation Statistics show that total assets of Irish insurance corporations stood at €464 billion in the first quarter of 2025.

That level of capital gives Ireland influence in how standards are applied. Ireland’s advantage is not just insurance scale, but the concentration of technology vendors, data specialists and start-ups operating alongside global carriers, creating the capability required to test, refine and deploy. Ireland’s broader position as a European hub for global technology and AI development further strengthens that experimentation environment.

More than 120 active InsurTech firms now operate across Ireland, spanning underwriting, claims, data intelligence, embedded insurance and regulatory technology. That density matters. It creates a live market in which ideas are tested against real operational complexity, not theoretical models.

The risk landscape is intensifying.

Munich Re’s 2024 natural catastrophe review estimated overall global losses at US$320 billion, with US$140 billion insured, and highlighted 43 separate events exceeding US$1 billion during the year. Those figures show how frequent and costly extreme events have become. Insurers need better tools and they must be confident those tools are reliable before deployment.

Since its establishment in 2021, InsTech.ie has played a central role in shaping how Ireland’s insurance technology ecosystem has evolved. It has acted not simply as an industry body, but as an orchestrator and neutral convenor, bringing together insurers, reinsurers, start-ups, regulators and technology providers to work on shared challenges in a structured way. That coordination has shifted Ireland from fragmented experimentation to organised execution. At a time when many markets were still discussing digital transformation in abstract terms, Ireland created a coordinated environment where experimentation could take place with discipline and focus.

What makes this moment different is that insurance is no longer quietly modernising behind the scenes. It is modernising within an increasingly defined regulatory framework. AI governance is being debated in Brussels. Operational resilience is being stress-tested across Europe. Capital adequacy requirements are being examined more closely. Insurance is becoming part of the wider public conversation about how technology should be supervised.

This shift makes practical testing essential. Rules are written at European level, but technology is deployed in real markets. That testing has to happen somewhere.

Regulatory dialogue and operational testing now sit alongside each other. The Central Bank’s Innovation Hub provides firms with a channel to discuss new models and understand regulatory expectations. That role is important. But discussion alone is not the same as technical validation. Insurance pricing models, capital impacts and reinsurance structures must be tested before they are deployed.

Through InsTech.ie, we established a dedicated insurance technology sandbox focused on testing technology and data-driven innovation in a controlled environment. The sandbox was created in response to industry demand for a structured setting to test AI and data-driven tools safely before deployment. It enables insurers to work with synthetic and anonymised datasets, assess capital impacts and evaluate system resilience before going live. It tests technology and data performance. Regulatory interpretation and supervisory approval remain the role of the Central Bank. This testing capability forms part of a broader ecosystem that includes collaboration across insurers on shared challenges,

The Foundry supporting early-stage insurtech firms, and capability-building initiatives such as Insurance Skillnet.

Across global financial centres, structured experimentation has become part of competitive positioning. Where firms can test early, they reduce risk before scaling. What distinguishes this market is the combination of insurance scale, regulatory credibility and a dense concentration of insurers, reinsurers and technology firms operating side by side. That mix creates a practical base for international insurers to experiment, refine and scale new technologies within the EU. Few EU markets combine insurance capital concentration, regulatory credibility and deep technology density within a single jurisdiction.

London has long positioned itself as a laboratory for financial innovation. Singapore has invested heavily in structured experimentation. Nordic markets are embedding supervisory technology frameworks into their financial systems.

The ingredients are already here in Ireland: insurance expertise, technology capability and practical testing infrastructure in one market. The task now is to ensure that international insurers recognise Ireland not simply as a place where insurance is regulated, but as the environment where modern insurance solutions are developed, tested and prepared for European scale. The infrastructure exists. The strategic choice now is whether Ireland steps forward to lead the future of European insurance.