This work is by Julie Getzlaff, senior product marketing director at Guidewire.
AI has been around for decades, but until Openai released a ChatGPT demonstration in November 2022, AI and its possibilities all captured the collective imagination of citizens, governments and businesses around the world.
While some sectors still wonder how they will benefit from AI, the insurance industry has already proven the usefulness of predictive analytics, and today many insurers are using machine learning to make better risk decisions. Now, these same insurers want to expand their use of ML to price risk wisely, reduce expense ratios and reduce protection gaps. We also want to implement Genai to improve productivity and customer service throughout the insurance lifecycle.
The warning is that none of this is possible without the acceptance of insurance customers. Many of them have expressed concern about how personal data will be processed by AI and used by insurers. So, what is the current situation regarding the customer perspective of insurance companies using AI?
Some answers have been implemented since 2020 and are provided by the latest findings from the Guidewire European Insurance Customer Attitudes Study, which has been researching AI attitudes for the past two years.
Comfort zone
Insurance companies are becoming increasingly more comfortable using their insurance companies' AI. The number of customers who are comfortable using AI to determine the price of insurance contracts using insurance companies has risen from 31% in 2024 to 37% in 2025. Comfort increased slightly in 2025 when AI is used to process and resolve claims without human intervention.
The underlying factor appears to be the experience of insurance customers themselves using generator AI. Of the representative sample of insurance customers who voted, the number of people using AI tools at least once a week increased from 21% in 2024 to 33% in 2025, while those who have never used AI tools fell from 40% to 28%.
The power of being familiar with generator AI is important. For example, one in two people who use AI tools several times a week are happy that AI manages insurance claims without human involvement. For daily AI users, most of them (69%) are happy with their use of this AI.
Warming customer attitudes towards AI gives insurance companies something to build, but they can't be satisfied. There is a lot of skepticism about how AI will improve services. One in three UK consumers said there is nothing to use AI to give insurance companies confidence.
This consumer resistance fell from 41% in 2024, but that's quite a bit. So how can insurers address these concerns?
One strategy is that insurers need to reassure customers that they have control over how AI is being used. They must be transparent about how AI is being deployed, but also how the system allows for smooth handover from AI to human agents when it requests it. In our study, the ability to introduce AI decisions to human operators is the best factor (40%) that makes customers more confident with insurance companies using AI. The salience of this is highlighted by how unimportant the client is considering the availability of independent regulators to police the use of AI by insurers (22%).
Customer Understanding
In line with this strategy is how insurers continue to do more to reassure customers about the responsible use of their data to provide personalized services. Access to data is key to the greater use of AI in everyday insurance processes, but there are indications that customers are continuing to be concerned about how data is being used.
The numbers say that insurers collect data from connected devices to better understand risks and why they view privacy violations as rising from 19% in 2024 to 24%. It was higher in 2022 (27%), but it has since collapsed, suggesting that it will return to a more privacy-conscious mindset. On the positive side, our study shows that the number of consumers that insurers think they are collecting data is a good thing, helping to improve services and lower prices for less risky policyholders, rising from 28% in 3 to almost one person (32%)
Insurers must continue to communicate how sharing customer data provides real value in terms of better service and cost reduction.
Improved customer knowledge about AI helps insurers integrate AI into their services, particularly for younger customer segments. However, insurers need to note that many customers want to call human support when needed and must build trust in the use of AI data.
