51% Trust AI to Research Life Insurance, 85% Still Want a Human to Close the Deal: Report
Life insurance is seeing growing AI adoption for policy research, but most consumers still prefer human guidance when making the final decision.
Life insurance buyers are increasingly turning to AI to research policies, but most still prefer human guidance before making a final decision.
Life Insurance: More than half of consumers worldwide plan to use generative AI tools to research and compare life insurance products, but 85% still want to interact with a human advisor at some point before finalizing a purchase, according to the World Life Insurance Report 2027, released September 10, 2026, by the Capgemini Research Institute and LIMRA. The findings, drawn from a global survey of more than 6,100 consumers and interviews with 198 senior insurance executives, point to a split in how consumers approach buying life insurance: they are willing to let AI do the legwork, but not the final decision.
The report found that 51% of consumers plan to use generative AI tools to discover and compare life insurance products. Despite this, two-thirds of consumers said they prefer working with a human advisor when finalizing their coverage decisions, and 85% said they want advisor interaction at some point during their journey, whether to validate research, answer questions, or provide reassurance.
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Life Insurance: Consumers Want Advisors Who Understand Their Circumstances
The report found that consumer expectations of advisors are becoming more specific. Half of respondents said they prefer working with advisors who share similar demographic characteristics, believing such advisors are better equipped to relate to their needs and life situations. However, fewer than a quarter of insurers currently have the capability to match advisors to consumers in this way.
Samantha Chow, Global Leader for Life Insurance, Annuities and Benefits Sector at Capgemini, said complexity at the point of purchase and silence after a sale undermine policy ownership, putting customer relationships at risk and triggering exits that cost the industry billions. She said best-in-class insurers build data foundations that convert customer intelligence into proactive, lifelong engagement, and orchestrate an ecosystem of advisors, partners, and AI-enabled channels to create a consistent journey between automated and human touchpoints.
The AI-and-human finding sits within a broader picture of consumer hesitation around life insurance. The report found that 47% of consumers are considering purchasing a policy, but more than 40% of that group described themselves as confused, uncertain, or unconvinced by the information available to them, and one in four consumers who begin the purchase journey abandon it before completion. Younger consumers showed the sharpest drop-off: 54% of respondents aged 18 to 40 said they are considering a purchase, but 28% of that group abandon the process. Overly technical language was cited by 37% of respondents as a barrier, followed by affordability concerns at 35% and a perceived lack of relevance to their life stage at 25%.
Life Insurance: Engagement Drops Off After Purchase
The report found that many insurers lose contact with customers once a policy is issued. Nearly 40% of policyholders said they rarely hear from their life insurer after purchase, and half of consumers who discontinue their policies do so within the first three years, before insurers have the opportunity to build long-term relationships. Separately, 48% of respondents said they would be more likely to stay with an insurer that offers proactive guidance before, during, and after a purchase.
Bryan Hodgens, Senior Vice President and Head of LIMRA Research, said affordability is often a perception problem, with consumers overestimating the true cost of life insurance, making consumer education one of the industry’s biggest opportunities. He said insurers need to bring consumers into the process and guide them through it, using tools like AI while not losing sight of how essential human advisors remain.
Life Insurance: A Small Group of Insurers Are Combining AI and Human Touchpoints Effectively
According to the report, only 18% of insurers currently have a unified strategy and customer journey roadmap. A group of best-in-class insurers, representing 10% of all carriers surveyed, distinguished themselves through three practices: tailoring advice to consumers’ life stages using plain language and proactive engagement around key life milestones, including AI-based conversational guidance to resolve queries; modernizing advisor experiences through improved compensation structures and real-time insights, including matching consumers to advisors based on age, gender, language, and cultural background at more than twice the rate of mainstream peers; and unifying consumer data into a single view while deploying agentic AI capabilities that execute tasks autonomously, at almost three times the rate of other insurers.
The report found that these best-in-class insurers achieved 41% higher revenue growth over the past three years and 12% lower lapse rates compared with mainstream peers.
