Swiss insurers & GenAI: Accelerating beyond the comfort zone

Are Swiss insurers keeping up?

The Swiss insurance sector has long been synonymous with trust, quality and rigorous regulation. In the past two years, leading insurers have accelerated their implementation of GenAI solutions such as 24/7 AI customer assistants, automating core claims processes, and piloting advanced analytics for underwriting and pricing. The results are promising: greater efficiency, faster turnaround times, and an improved customer experience.

Yet there is no denying the intensity of the international competition . Major players in the US, UK and Asia are investing heavily and moving quickly, piloting new AI use cases and scaling them across markets with remarkable speed. Approaches to scaling make use of so-called ’GenAI factories’. A GenAI factory consists of technical components that can be re-used for different AI applications across the organization and, based on our experience, reduces the development time of new AI use cases by 40% Insurance companies in the US and Asia are also experiencing a more AI-friendly environment as investments in innovative approaches are accepted more readily, cloud environments are more widely used, and the regulatory environment supports AI-based ideation processes with clear guidance. Some applications using Agentic AI have already been developed and implemented outside Switzerland: these call for a re-design of existing business processes in organisations. While Switzerland’s ‘step-by-step” approach reflects a healthy respect for privacy, compliance and risk management, the real competitive risk lies in staying too long in the pilot phase. The opportunity—and the imperative—is to move decisively from experimentation to large-scale deployment.

Where GenAI delivers value

Today, the impact of GenAI is in three key areas:

• Customer experience: AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants offer 24/7 real-time support, streamline claims, and provide instant answers and policy information in call center support. This does not just lift customer satisfaction and improves the customer journey; it allows humans to focus on complex, high-value conversations.

• Process efficiency: Claims processing, document handling and underwriting are being transformed. GenAI can ingest, analyze, and categorize documents, suggest actions, and automate repetitive tasks — unlocking substantial cost savings and reducing error rates.

• Capability, innovation and new insights: By analyzing large and diverse data sets, GenAI creates new insights—supporting fraud detection by anomaly detection, product innovation, and trend recognition. It also enables employees to access knowledge more intuitively, freeing up time for creative and strategic work.

The Swiss challenge: Turning caution into competitive edge

Swiss insurers have strong foundations: robust cloud and data architectures, high trust from clients, and a clear understanding of regulatory requirements. But success with GenAI will demand more than technical capability.

Three priorities are emerging as decisive:

• Tempo (Speed): The winners in GenAI will be those that scale quickly. Swiss insurers must shorten decision cycles, move pilots into production, and be willing to learn fast. Failing with a use case will be part of the experience, but the lessons learned will pay off. Innovating with GenAI is a marathon rather than a sprint. The era of endless workshops should end ; now is the time for bold implementation.
  

• Talent: AI adoption isn’t just about hiring data scientists. It requires digitally savvy professionals across business lines, investment in upskilling, and new ways of working. Partnerships with start-ups and universities, and building strong and trusted ecosystems will also play a key role in attracting and developing the right skills. An insurance company will only be successful in the transformation if its entire talent pool is AI literate. This is not an option, it is a must.
  

• Trust: Customers and employees alike need to see the benefits of GenAI: transparency is vital. Customers want to know when AI is used and how their data is protected. Employees must trust that AI will empower rather than replace them. Building this trust will be just as important as technical excellence. You can only build such trust if you allow your employees to experience the power and the strength of GenAI in practice and learn also the limitations and barriers to overcome.

Overcoming barriers: Privacy, culture and vision

Data privacy and regulatory compliance remain top concerns. The solution is to integrate risk management and compliance into the AI development process from the outset, engage with regulators early, and embed encryption technologies into your solutions. An alternative approach is to deploy your solution on-premise instead in the cloud. With the increased strength and competitiveness of open-source LLMs that can be fine-tuned in a safe and secure environment according to the insurance company’s needs, this represents a very good alternative to commercial LLMs in the cloud. AI risk management must be part of the entire end-to-end development process and should be considered for any new business idea for a GenAI use case.

Organisational culture is also critical. GenAI transformation must be led from the top, with a clear vision, defined responsibilities at executive level, and a culture that encourages experimentation and learning. It calls for a cross-business transformation in which every department and business line needs to contribute. Companies that succeed with AI transformation are those where the sponsor is at the C-suite level and a clear and measured monitoring of progress has been implemented. Training and data literacy are essential for bringing everyone along on the journey and minimising resistance.

Above all, GenAI should be embedded in business strategy—not pursued as a technology trend but as a lever to solve real business problems, deliver better outcomes, and differentiate in the market.

From pilot to performance

Swiss insurers are at a crossroads: the technology and talent are within reach, but the pace of change must accelerate. Leadership teams need to set ambitious goals, foster a culture of innovation, and move from pilots to broad-based adoption—without losing sight of the qualities that have made Swiss insurance a global benchmark for trust and quality.

Those who act now, scaling GenAI at speed, investing in talent, and building trust, will not only keep pace—they will set new standards for the industry.

If you would like to discuss how GenAI can help drive your insurance business forward, we are always happy to speak with you.