Underwriter AI Optimism Reaches 86% as Talent War Intensifies
Underwriting professionals have flipped the script on artificial intelligence: rather than fearing it, 86% of underwriters now say AI has made them more optimistic about the profession's future, according to new research from Sixfold, the AI underwriting firm that raised $30 million in a Series B round in January 2026. The finding, drawn from a survey of 543 underwriting professionals across the United States and Europe, reframes a debate that until recently centred on whether AI would displace underwriters at all.
The study, The Future of Underwriting: AI Adoption, Workforce Trends, and Industry Optimism, was commissioned by Sixfold and fielded independently in May 2026. It surveyed 270 underwriting executives and 273 underwriters, all of whom were actively using or piloting AI in their workflows, with a margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Among executives, optimism was near-universal at 99%, while 79% of underwriters said they feel prepared for what comes next.
What is actually driving the optimism?
The enthusiasm rests on measurable output rather than sentiment. Every executive surveyed reported that AI had made their teams faster, better, or both. Ninety-two percent pointed to improved underwriting decisions, and 85% said AI was helping their teams process a higher volume of submissions. Four in five executives said AI was already delivering a clear return on investment or expressed confidence that it would.
Those figures track with what Sixfold reports from its own deployments. The company, which counts Zurich, Generali Global Corporate & Commercial, Guardian, AXIS, Skyward Specialty and New York Life among its customers, says its platform has processed more than 1.5 million submissions across over 50 lines of business, with a customer base representing roughly $270 billion in gross written premium.
How is AI reshaping the competition for talent?
The most consequential finding for insurance leaders may be the link between AI capability and staff retention. More than three quarters of executives said they were concerned about hiring and keeping experienced underwriters, and 77% worried that employees could defect to organisations with stronger AI tools. Underwriters confirmed the pull: 72% said an employer's AI strategy would influence a future career move.
That represents a reversal from the anxieties of even a year ago, when the prevailing leadership concern was whether underwriters would resist AI entering their workflow at all. The data now suggests the opposite risk, that firms slow to invest will lose their best people to those moving faster. Jane Tran, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sixfold, framed the shift bluntly, arguing that an insurer's AI strategy has effectively become its retention strategy, a connection she said many organisations have yet to fully grasp.
Where does the friction still sit?
The research also identifies where the next round of gains is likely to come from, and it points to the broker relationship. While most underwriters said AI had improved their dealings with brokers and agents, eight in ten still spend between 30 minutes and four hours chasing missing information on a single risk. Two thirds of executives said they wanted better visibility into the quality of submissions arriving from each broker and agent, a data gap that current tools have largely failed to close.
That friction sits against a market backdrop that raises the stakes. Deloitte projects the US property and casualty combined ratio will deteriorate to 99% in 2026, squeezing margins and rewarding carriers that can select risk more precisely and turn quotes around faster. Sixfold founder and chief executive Alex Schmelkin argued that underwriters have moved past basic document ingestion and triage tools and now want AI that mirrors how they actually reason about risk, and that insurers ready to put that into production will outpace competitors.
The full report is available to download from Sixfold.
Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers
For insurers, the retention finding reframes AI spending as a talent-cost lever, not just an efficiency play. In a market where the P&C combined ratio is tightening toward 99%, the carriers that pair faster submission handling with better risk selection stand to protect margin while their slower peers absorb both cost pressure and staff attrition. For investors, the signal is that underwriting AI is shifting from pilot to production economics, with vendors like Sixfold now pricing against customer premium growth rather than seat licences, tying their revenue directly to carrier performance.
