TL;DR Insurance organizations have more operational data than ever before, yet many still struggle to turn that information into meaningful action. According to Covenir’s 2026 Insurance Operations Leaders Trends Report, more than 80% of insurance operations leaders say operational insights generated through human or AI analysis are critical to business success. Yet nearly half of organizations are either not using operational insights at all or collecting data they cannot effectively act upon. The challenge isn’t visibility. It’s execution. The insurers creating a competitive advantage today aren’t necessarily collecting more data than their peers. They’re finding ways to close the gap between knowing and doing.
Insurance Doesn’t Have a Data Problem
If you’re responsible for insurance operations, chances are your organization already has plenty of information. Your call center tracks handle times and customer sentiment. Your claims team monitors cycle times and workloads. Your mailroom, payment processing, and policy servicing operations generate reports every day. Every interaction, transaction, and workflow creates another data point.
And yet, despite all that information, many operations leaders still find themselves asking surprisingly basic questions.
- Why are service levels slipping?
- What’s driving policyholder frustration?
- Where are employees losing time?
- Which operational changes would create the biggest impact?
The issue isn’t a lack of visibility. It’s that visibility alone rarely tells the whole story. Most reports can tell you what happened. Fewer can tell you why it happened. Even fewer help you determine what to do next. That’s where operational insights become valuable.
The Gap Between Knowing and Doing
One of the most interesting findings from Covenir’s 2026 Insurance Operations Leaders Trends Report wasn’t that leaders value operational insights. It was how strongly they value them.
More than four out of five respondents agreed that operational insights generated through human expertise or AI analysis are critical to business success. At the same time, nearly half reported that they either aren’t using operational insights at all or are collecting information they struggle to act on. That finding reveals something important: Insurance operations leaders already understand the value of operational intelligence. They don’t need to be convinced that insights matter.
Instead, what they’re looking for is a practical way to transform those insights into measurable improvements. In many organizations, valuable knowledge gets trapped between departments, systems, and reports. Teams recognize recurring problems but lack the time, resources, or visibility to identify root causes and implement meaningful changes. Over time, that gap becomes expensive. Small inefficiencies become accepted as normal. Manual workarounds become standard operating procedures. Friction that affects employees and policyholders alike remains hidden in plain sight.
Some of the Most Valuable Insights Are Hiding in Everyday Operations
One of the advantages of working across FNOL, claims support, customer service, virtual mailroom operations, and back-office workflows is that patterns become easier to see. After supporting hundreds of thousands of policyholder interactions, you begin to notice something. The biggest operational opportunities are rarely found in executive dashboards. They’re often hidden inside the day-to-day work.
- A claims call that takes three minutes longer than it should.
- A recurring question agents answer dozens of times per day.
- A document workflow that creates unnecessary handoffs.
- An exception process that forces employees to leave one system and enter another.
Individually, these moments seem small. Collectively, they shape policyholder experiences, employee productivity, operational costs, and business performance. The challenge for most insurers isn’t identifying that friction exists. It’s creating a process that consistently uncovers it and translates it into action.
How Covenir Uses Operational Insights to Improve Performance for Insurers
At Covenir, operational insights aren’t treated as a reporting exercise. They’re part of how we help insurance partners improve performance.
Because our teams work directly within customer service, FNOL, claims intake, print and mail, and back-office operations, we’re able to observe how processes perform in real-world environments. More importantly, we’re able to connect operational patterns to business outcomes. They’re a tool for uncovering problems that traditional operational metrics often miss.
One of the challenges insurance leaders face is that they can see what’s happening on the surface without fully understanding why it’s happening. Call volumes, service levels, complaint rates, and customer satisfaction scores all provide valuable information, but they don’t always reveal the root cause of operational friction.
A recent engagement with a Florida-based insurance carrier illustrates the difference.
The carrier knew something wasn’t right. Policyholders were frustrated. Agents were frustrated. Yet from a traditional operations perspective, everything appeared to be functioning normally. Calls were being answered, service levels were being met, and no obvious operational failures were showing up in management reports.
The problem was that nobody had a clear view into what was actually driving the frustration.
After implementing Covenir Management Insights, our proprietary AI technology following interactions across the carrier’s call center environment, patterns emerged that had previously been hidden inside thousands of conversations.
The first report uncovered three significant root causes. The analysis revealed that agents were regularly contacting claims adjusters with negative sentiment because claim updates were not being communicated effectively. It identified billing statements that were creating confusion for policyholders and generating unnecessary service inquiries. And it found that the carrier’s quoting script was setting expectations that a quote would be delivered within 30 minutes, while the actual turnaround time was closer to three days.
None of these issues appeared in traditional operational reports. Yet collectively, they were creating frustration across the customer journey. Most importantly, the insights didn’t stop at identifying problems. They provided management with a roadmap for action.
One script adjustment immediately corrected customer expectations around quote turnaround times. Leadership gained visibility into billing communication issues that required clarification. Claims process friction that had previously gone unnoticed was brought into the open.
In the first month alone, the carrier identified three actionable root causes, uncovered negative agent sentiment affecting 32% of interactions, and implemented a script change that improved customer expectations virtually overnight.
That’s the difference between collecting operational data and generating operational insights.
The goal isn’t simply to understand what’s happening inside your operation. The goal is to uncover the hidden drivers behind employee and policyholder experiences so leaders can take meaningful action.
At its best, operational intelligence doesn’t just tell you what happened. It tells you what to fix next.
The Competitive Advantage Few Insurers Talk About
When insurers think about competitive advantage, they often focus on products, pricing, distribution, or technology. Those things matter. But increasingly, operational intelligence may be just as important. Organizations that consistently learn from their operations and act on those lessons improve faster than competitors that rely on assumptions or historical processes.
They identify problems earlier. They reduce operational friction more quickly. They make better decisions because those decisions are grounded in what is actually happening across their business. And perhaps most importantly, they create better experiences for policyholders and employees alike.
For more information about how Covenir is using AI to help insurers gain access to actionable insights, contact us.
FAQ
What are operational insights in insurance?
Operational insights are actionable findings derived from business processes, customer interactions, claims workflows, service operations, and other operational activities. They help leaders understand why performance issues occur and what actions can improve outcomes.
Why are operational insights important for insurance operations leaders?
Operational insights help leaders improve efficiency, reduce costs, identify bottlenecks, strengthen compliance, and enhance policyholder experiences. They transform operational data into practical decision-making tools.
How does AI improve operational insights?
AI can analyze large volumes of calls, documents, workflows, and interactions to identify patterns and opportunities that would be difficult to uncover manually. This helps organizations act faster and make more informed operational decisions.
What is the difference between operational data and operational insights?
Operational data shows what happened. Operational insights help explain why it happened and identify actions that can improve future performance.
How can insurance outsourcing partners provide operational insights?
Insurance outsourcing partners operate within day-to-day workflows and often have visibility across large volumes of interactions and processes. This perspective allows them to identify patterns, uncover opportunities for improvement, and help insurers implement operational changes more quickly.