TLDR
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90% of insurance operations leaders say they’re confident they’re delivering on their brand promise in insurance operations.
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42% say brand promise breakdowns happen most often at First Notice of Loss.
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FNOL is the function most exposed to stretched teams and reduced training investment right now.
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J.D. Power research shows 80% of auto insurance customers with a poor claims experience switch or plan to switch carriers.
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The full findings are in Covenir’s 2026 Insurance Operations Leaders Trends Report.
For the last two years, my team has surveyed insurance operations leaders across carriers, MGAs, and Insurtechs to find out what’s on the minds of the people on the ground responsible for claims, FNOL, back-office operations, and the day-to-day work that holds policyholder relationships together.
The output of that work, the Insurance Operations Leaders Trends Report, is full of insights about the people and organizations making the insurance industry work. In this year’s report we revisited some of the trends from last year and explored some new ones. In this post, I want to dig into one finding that I keep coming back to.
Confident But Realistic
Ninety percent of operations leaders say they’re extremely or very confident their organization is delivering on its brand promise. That’s a strong number, and in the conversations I have with carriers and MGAs every day, I believe it. The people running insurance operations care about the policyholder experience, and in the vast majority of interactions they’re getting it right.
But 42% of those same leaders say brand promise breakdowns happen most often at First Notice of Loss (FNOL).
I’ve been thinking about what it means for those two numbers to coexist.
What the Data Shows About FNOL
FNOL is the call a policyholder makes after a car accident or a house fire. It’s the highest-stakes human moment in the insurance relationship. And according to our survey, it’s the function where the experience most often falls short.
The J.D. Power data we reference in the report reinforces why this matters: 80% of auto insurance customers who have a poor claims experience switch or plan to switch carriers. The smallest carriers are the most exposed. Thirty percent of leaders at organizations with 1 to 199 employees say they aren’t confident their operations will consistently deliver on the experience their brand promises.
What the data also shows is that FNOL sits at the intersection of the biggest operational pressures we identified this year: stretched teams, declining training investment, and the AI readiness gap. 65% of respondents say their teams are more stretched than ever, and 20% are cutting training budgets while only 7% are protecting them.
How We Think About It at Covenir
FNOL has always been a strategic priority for us, not an operational cost center. We’ve built our Covenir IntelliClaims Advantage specifically around the idea that FNOL, desk adjusting, and subrogation should work as one seamless experience, with licensed onshore professionals who are trained for the human complexity of that moment.
We’ve also invested in Covenir Agent Coach, our AI-powered call guidance tool, so agents get live feedback on every interaction and leaders get consistent quality without adding overhead. And our Call Surge Guarantee means that when catastrophic events drive volume spikes, the FNOL experience doesn’t collapse at exactly the moment policyholders need it most.
29% of respondents in our survey now expect their outsourcing partners to have AI embedded in their services. We’re answering that call with tools that work at the moments the data says matter most.
There’s More in the Report
The brand promise and FNOL findings are one section of a much broader picture. This year’s survey also covers the AI readiness gap, the operational insights problem holding back the middle of the market, and the significant shift in what insurance leaders now expect from their outsourcing partners.
Download the 2026 Insurance Operations Leaders Trends Report.