Four Key Data Trends Shaping Insurance in 2025
The insurance industry continues to evolve at pace, with data playing an increasingly central role across the value chain. From underwriting to claims and personalised customer experience, insurers who harness data effectively will gain a significant competitive edge. Owen Greenwood , our Client Partner for Insurance, shares four key trends shaping the sector this year - and what insurers must prioritise to stay ahead.
1. Centralising Data for a Unified Customer View Bringing together disparate data sources is a top priority. From telematics to IoT, insurers have access to vast data, but fragmented systems hinder its full potential. A centralised platform enhances underwriting accuracy, pricing, claims, and customer experience.
Use Case: Covéa Insurance partnered with Dufrain to consolidate data into structured layers within Databricks, improving accessibility and enabling business users to extract insights without relying on data engineers.
2. Elevating Data Quality as a Business Asset Centralisation alone isn’t enough - robust data management, governance, and quality control are essential. Poor data quality can lead to inefficiencies, regulatory risks, and inaccurate insights that impact business performance. Duplicate records, outdated information, and inconsistencies across legacy systems create operational bottlenecks and limit insurers' ability to make data-driven decisions.
Investing in data cleansing, harmonisation, and governance frameworks ensures accuracy, consistency, and compliance, ultimately driving better business outcomes.
Use Case: Howden tackled inconsistent, siloed data by implementing a unified data lake with Dufrain, significantly improving governance and enabling self-serve reporting.
3. Driving Business Value from Data Insurers are shifting from ‘just having data’ to extracting real business value - whether through improved risk modelling, cross-selling, or market-derived income (MDI). The key challenge is measuring tangible impact.
Use Case: Covéa Insurance moved from manual Excel reports to an automated loss ratios dashboard, enabling real-time performance tracking and pricing optimisation.
Recommended by LinkedIn
4. AI Adoption: Evolution Over Revolution AI remains a hot topic, but insurers are focusing on strong data foundations before full-scale adoption. Without structured data, AI’s potential remains limited. AI-powered underwriting, chatbots, and fraud detection offer significant opportunities, but successful adoption requires high-quality, well-governed data and a clear implementation strategy.
The key is to move from AI experimentation to operationalisation, ensuring AI initiatives align with business objectives and regulatory requirements. Companies investing in AI-readiness today will be better positioned to deploy transformative solutions at scale.
Use Case: A leading insurer worked with Dufrain to enhance data maturity, ensuring they are AI-ready when the time is right.
Read our AI blog series
Final Thoughts: While AI is making headlines, the real priority for insurers in 2025 is getting the basics right - centralising data, improving quality, and driving measurable value. Those who master these fundamentals will be best positioned to leverage AI effectively.
Read our full blog for a deeper dive into these key trends.
Get in touch to discuss how we can help your team stay ahead.