InsurTech4Good.com Weekly Newsletter – #32, 2025

A lot is happening again in insurance and financial innovation. See for yourself.

But before that, I would like to personally invite you to participate in a global Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study on AI in financial services that I am working on with a great team.

Please take a moment to contribute and help us make a real impact.

Andres Lehtmets

Smart supervision: sound capacity development approaches for tech-savvy supervisors

One thing I'm genuinely proud of is being able to consider myself a founding father of the EU Supervisory Digital Finance Academy, a dedicated pan-EU learning programme for financial services supervisors to upskill on technology and digital topics.

It was therefore especially rewarding to see this initiative mentioned in a recent BIS paper, and even more so to read that some authorities consider it a key tool for upskilling their staff. That was precisely the idea when we started.

Financial authorities’ role in maintaining the safety and soundness of firms and the financial system requires a unique set of skills and expertise. 

In an ever-changing technological landscape, they need suitably skilled staff to benefit from new supervisory tools and to address emerging risks arising from financial institutions’ use of technology. 

Excellent work again from the BIS team in highlighting these issues.

P.S. If you are thinking about how to set up your own tech and digital upskilling programme, feel free to reach out. I'm happy to help with overall design and budgeting, curriculum development and selecting suitable e-tools.

Read more here. 

Gen AI in the Insurance Customer Journey

68% of customers have used Gen AI assistants to buy insurance.

Insurers are rapidly accelerating their AI adoption, while customers increasingly turn to general-purpose Gen AI tools to guide their insurance decisions.

Understanding how they perceive and engage with these technologies is now critical for both trust and responsible innovation.

Based on a survey of 6,000 customers across the world’s six largest insurance markets (China, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US), this new report offers:

• Insights into customer awareness of Gen AI in insurance
• Their real-life experiences using Gen AI assistants
• Attitudes toward Gen AI across different markets and age groups

It also sets out practical recommendations for integrating Gen AI into the insurance customer journey, including:

• Hybrid human–AI service models
• Investment in robust, interoperable data infrastructure
• Systematic reskilling and upskilling of employees

If you are working on AI, digital distribution, supervision, policy making, or customer experience in insurance, this is a space to watch very closely.

Read more here. 

From Connectivity to Coverage: Scaling Resilience through Mobile-Enabled Microinsurance

Mobile technology can play a crucial role in closing the protection gap for millions of people in low- and middle-income countries who still lack access to adequate and affordable insurance. In 2023, only 12% of the target population for microinsurance had any cover. In the same year, there were at least 1.8 billion registered mobile money accounts. This contrast underlines the significant potential of mobile-enabled insurance to help narrow the protection gap.

Before 2021, several mobile network operators and some mobile money providers were already offering insurance. Since then, more players have entered the market with new products. However, developments and innovation in this area have not been widely visible, and awareness remains limited. This report seeks to address that knowledge gap.

The lessons highlighted in the report draw on the experiences of early pioneers, organisations that have scaled their offerings, and other stakeholders that encountered barriers to entry and growth. Applying these lessons in a coordinated way can foster better collaboration between microinsurance providers and the mobile industry. In turn, this could support greater financial inclusion and strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities.

Read more here. 

Singapore Proposed Guidelines on Artificial Intelligence Risk Management for Financial Institutions

Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has  issued a consultation paper on proposed Guidelines on AI Risk Management for the financial sector.

The Guidelines will apply to all financial institutions and set out supervisory expectations on:

• Oversight of AI risk management – roles of the Board and senior management, governance, and risk culture for AI use.
• AI risk management systems, policies and procedures – firm-wide identification of AI use cases, AI inventories, and risk materiality assessments (impact, complexity, reliance).
• AI life cycle controls, capabilities and capacities – controls for data management, fairness, transparency/explainability, human oversight, third-party risk, testing, monitoring and change management, applied proportionately to AI risk.

The Guidelines are technology- and use-case agnostic, covering a broad range of AI applications, including generative AI and AI agents, and are intended to be proportionate to the size, nature and risk profile of each FI.

Read more here. 

Making SupTech Work 

SupTech is not an IT project. It’s an institutional transformation.

A new BIS paper makes this very clear: authorities that treat SupTech as part of a broader change agenda, not just tool procurement, are the ones that actually scale.

In practice, that means:

• Integrated strategy: data, technology and transformation aligned, not in silos
• Dedicated structures: for example a suptech unit that can turn strategy into delivery
• Real workflow integration: tools embedded in day-to-day supervision, not parked in pilots.

I´m currently supporting insurance supervisory authorities on exactly this journey, from diagnostics and gap analysis to mapping future needs and building actionable roadmaps.

If you are working on SupTech or planning to start in 2026, I have some capacity (via development banks or directly with authorities). Feel free to message me if you would like to compare notes or explore support.

Read more here. 

Innovation facilitation in insurance 

Last week I was on stage sharing recent InsurTech trends from regulatory/supervisory perspective and highlighted “innovation facilitation 2.0” as one of the key developments.

Regulators and supervisors are moving towards dedicated sandboxes, such as AI-focused or sustainability-focused sandboxes, and are also organizing more hackathon-type events to solve problems most relevant for their jurisdictions, be it open finance, pensions, or something else.

One excellent example along these lines is EIOPA’s Pensions Tech Sprint.

Over three days, multidisciplinary teams co-created prototypes to boost pension awareness, engagement, and adequacy for three specific consumer groups: women, Generation Z, and self-employed/gig workers.

Three concepts emerged: “Future Me”, an AI-enabled co-pilot tailored to women’s life courses; “GIG: Great. Income. Generator”, a save-as-you-earn pension savings system with a gig-economy focus; and “FIRE”, a mobile-first, gamified app for young starters.

All three solutions illustrate how behaviourally informed design, layered information, and artificial intelligence can translate into sustained saving habits and better retirement outcomes.

The report outlines the TechSprint’s approach and methodology, behavioural and digital insights, pension journeys, and key lessons learned from the TechSprint.

Read more here. 

Impact of artificial intelligence on the financial sector

The European Parliament has just adopted a resolution on the impact of artificial intelligence on the financial sector.

Read more here.

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