This year’s UK Insurance CEO Outlook report highlights how CEOs are both confident and concerned as they wrestle with a complex set of pressures and challenges that require bold decisions and concrete action. These challenges include pathways to growth, digital transformation, talent retention and meeting sustainability goals. Other than Technology leaders, Insurance CEOs are more likely than any other CEO cohort to view Generative AI as a top investment priority with the main use cases being data analysis and tackling cyber & fraud threats.
Insurance CEOs are confident that they will be able to grow their business over the next three years — both in terms of earnings and headcount. CEOs are highly focused on accelerating their digital transformation, delivering on their ESG agenda and enhancing productivity. And at the same time, they recognise the need to infuse the organisation with new talent and to embrace new technologies — Gen AI in particular — if they hope to achieve their growth objectives. Strikingly, not a single CEO respondent agreed with the view that Generative AI adoption will eliminate more jobs than it creates.
Key findings from our research
73%
Despite economic headwinds, 73 percent of insurance CEOs are confident about their company’s growth prospects and 93 percent expect to increase the size of their workforce over the next three years.
81%
In 2024, insurance CEOs were more than twice as likely as the all-industry average to agree they were utilising AI to help speed up data analysis. Eighty-one percent of insurance CEOs consider Gen AI as a top investment priority for their organisation.
63%
ESG continues to be a key focus for many insurance organisations, with 63 percent of insurance CEOs confident that they will meet Net Zero goals by 2030.
54%
Only 54 percent of our respondents say they are ‘well prepared’ for a cyber attack (down from 66 percent last year), and just 43 percent think their cyber strategy can keep up with the rapid advancements enabled by AI.
This is an interesting set of survey responses. Insurance CEOs are clearly confident about their firms’ growth prospects despite heightened geopolitical risk, ongoing economic uncertainty and digital transformation challenges. Over 90% of Insurance CEOs expect to see their workforce expand over the next three years as they look to Gen AI to improve data analytics and fight financial crime rather than eliminate jobs.
Methodology
The KPMG 2024 Insurance CEO Outlook, part of the 10th edition of the KPMG 2024 CEO Outlook, is compiled from the views of 120 insurance chief executive officers, which was conducted between 25 July and 29 August 2024, providing unique insight into the mindset, strategies, and planning tactics of CEOs.
All respondents oversee companies with annual revenues over US$500M and a third of the companies surveyed have more than US$10B in annual revenue. The overall CEO survey included CEOs from 11 key markets (UK, USA, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain) and 11 key industry sectors, including insurance. NOTE: some figures may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.
In the insurance sector research, the two largest sub-sectors were Auto, Home, Property and Casualty with 31 percent of respondents and life insurers with 30 percent. The best-represented countries based on organisational headquarters are the US and the UK, followed by China, India and Canada.
