Digital insurers compete on underwriting speed, not just interface
A digital insurer's real advantage isn't a nicer app — it's underwriting and pricing risk faster, using data a traditional insurer's legacy systems weren't built to process quickly. That's where underwriting AI does its work: pulling in more granular data (driving behaviour, property condition, health signals, depending on the line of business) to price risk more precisely than a standard actuarial table, and doing it in the time it takes a customer to complete a signup form rather than over days of manual review.
Claims automation is where the trust actually gets tested
Insurance is a product most customers only interact with meaningfully once — when something goes wrong and they file a claim. Claims automation tools use photos, sensor data, or straightforward digital forms to assess and pay out simple claims in hours rather than weeks, and route only genuinely complex or disputed claims to a human. This is also where InsurTech's reputation gets made or broken: automation that pays fair claims fast builds trust; automation that's tuned mainly to minimise payouts erodes it quickly, and European regulators have paid increasing attention to exactly this tension.
DORA reaches insurers too, not just banks
The EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act has applied since January 2025, and its scope extends to insurers and the technology suppliers they depend on — not just banks and payment institutions. For InsurTech vendors selling into regulated insurers, that means being ready to demonstrate operational resilience and third-party risk controls as a condition of the sale, not an afterthought.





