In 2026, insurers across both sectors face sustained cost pressures, rising customer and distributor expectations, and a rapidly evolving technology landscape in which AI and automation have moved from emerging concepts to active strategic investments. Creating lasting value now requires funding mature IT organizations that can support modern systems and compete for top talent; it also requires carriers to make deliberate choices about where and how to deploy new capabilities at scale.
This report reveals insights that can guide development roadmaps or market positioning by helping insurers understand peer behavior, budgets, and priorities for the coming year as context for their strategic planning activities. It presents and analyzes the results of a Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 survey of 38 insurer CIO and technology leader members of the Datos Insights Insurance Technology Research Council, which focused on insurer IT spending, staffing levels, system capability self-assessments, and planned technology investments and business priorities for the 2026 fiscal year.
Clients of Datos Insights’ Life, Annuities, & Benefits and Property & Casualty services can download this report.
This report mentions AWS, C3.ai, Google Cloud, H2O.ai, Microsoft Azure, and Palantir Foundry.
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