Tens of billions of dollars of insurance outsourcing is up for renegotiation, yet the vast majority of buyers are unhappy with existing contracts.

A mea Platform commissioned analysis has found that only 8 per cent of insurance outsourcing buyers would renew their contracts as they stand.

An insurance-native agentic artificial intelligence company, mea is Bermuda-domiciled and headquartered on the island.

Drawing on its September study, “The State of Insurance Operations”, it found that business process outsourcing falls short on artificial intelligence.

Some 86 per cent of insurance buyers of outsourced operations concede they would renegotiate for AI efficiency or completely rework terms and service levels if those contracts were renewed today.

Some 64 per cent would renegotiate and 23 per cent would rework the contract outright.

The mea Platform study was published by ISG, the global AI-centred technology research and advisory firm. Buyers are reopening price, scope and accountability together, in favour of AI-enabled solutions.

The study surveyed 150 insurance decision makers in August 2026 across 20 operational activities, among primary carriers, brokers, MGAs and reinsurers in North America, Europe and Asia.

AI-led innovation falls below expectations for 49 per cent of BPO users, the largest shortfall among the nine dimensions assessed. Strategic value follows at 39 per cent. ISG recommends that insurers compare providers, platforms and internal build on equivalent workflow evidence.

A statement from mea said: “Insurance outsourcing reaches across the value chain. Providers run new business and distribution support, including submission intake, underwriting support, and agent licensing and appointments. They administer policies end to end, through endorsements, renewals, billing and collections and customer servicing.

“They handle claims from first notice of loss through adjudication support, investigation, medical and disability management, subrogation and recoveries. They carry out underwriting, pricing and actuarial analysis, reinsurance treaty management, bordereaux, accounting and reconciliation, and premium accounting, statutory reporting and sanctions screening.

“In life, annuity and retirement, third-party administrators go further and run entire blocks of business, including closed blocks, on their own systems. Most of the work is priced by transaction or by full-time equivalent, so the cost of handling more business rises with the volume of it.”

Global Market Insights values core insurance BPO at $7.5 billion in 2025 and The Business Research Company at $8.4 billion, both forecasting around $12 billion within the decade. Mordor Intelligence puts insurance BPO services at $68.4 billion for 2026 by including technology-enabled delivery.

The report sets four conditions for execution that an institution can trust: controlled evidence drawn from policy wording, endorsements, appetite and claims guidance; permissions that separate what a system may read from what it may decide; a named person who can override or stop it; and configured authority, meaning the system operates within that institution's own rules. Those conditions apply to every route, including a platform.

Martin Henley, CEO, mea Platform, said: “These arrangements made sense when the only way to handle more submissions was to put more people in front of them. Outsourcing to cheaper labour buys a few points of unit cost, and it takes years of transition and governance to collect them.

“What insurers can buy now is execution across that entire scope, from submission intake through policy administration, claims and reinsurance accounting, and it goes live in weeks because the system already understands insurance. It runs at whatever volume the business puts through it, and every action it takes leaves a record.”

Ashish Jhajharia, insurance principal analyst at ISG, commented: “The shortfall buyers name most often is AI-led innovation, and that is a hard thing to answer at a renewal, because it cannot be settled with a price concession.”