Why insurers need decision-ready data across the business

Insurers are not short of data. They continue to invest in analytics and are moving quickly to scale AI across the business. Yet many still face the same underlying challenge. The issue is not simply that data sits in different systems. It is that even when data is brought together, it often still lacks the resolution and context needed to support confident, consistent decisions. Without a clear view of how people, policies, claims, businesses, and events are connected, insurers struggle to turn information into action at the moment it matters. 

As one claims leader recently observed in a Quantexa executive roundtable, the challenge is not a lack of data, but the time and complexity involved in bringing it together and connecting it in a way that supports decisions. 

That challenge is becoming harder to ignore. Gartner’s latest report on data and analytics trends in banking and insurance highlights five capabilities that will shape the future of decision making in financial services.¹ For insurers, the opportunity is not to pursue those capabilities in isolation, but to connect them in a way that makes data more usable, more trusted, and more actionable across the business.  

The right data but at the wrong time 

Insurance has always been a data-driven industry. Insurers are highly experienced in analytics, modelling, and risk assessment. But more data and more investment do not automatically lead to better decisions. Too often, there is still no clear, connected enterprise view of data and applied at the moment a decision needs to be made.  

The traditional response has often been to build bespoke pipelines around specific use cases, whether that is a claims model, an underwriting workflow, or a fraud solution. Over time, that approach creates bottlenecks, fragmented ownership between IT and business teams, and disconnected point solutions that add friction rather than reducing it.  

People working in claims make decisions based on claims data. Underwriters make decisions based on underwriting data. Neither may be aware that context sitting in the other domain could help them make better-informed decisions. This is the reality of insurance decision making today. Siloed ways of working not only make it harder to act with confidence; they can also limit teams’ understanding of what information could be useful in the first place.  

This creates a decision gap where decisions are made with only part of the picture, which can slow action, weaken accuracy, and make it harder to scale good outcomes across the business. A stronger path forward is a connected data foundation that supports the business as a whole and helps maximise the value of every decision. Instead of serving only one function at a time, it gives insurers a way to inform a much broader range of decision making, from underwriting and claims orchestration to aggregate risk exposure analysis, customer engagement, litigation management, and more. 

How connected decision-ready data creates value 

The five trends identified by Gartner point to a broader shift in how insurers need to think about data today.² The issue is not simply collecting more of it. It is creating data that is ready to support decisions across operational workflows, with enough context, quality, and trust to be used at scale. 

That starts with reducing fragmentation. When an insurer holds multiple records for the same person, business, policy, or claim, decision quality suffers because teams are acting on partial views rather than connected ones. Bringing those fragmented records together is the first step. The next is creating a network view of entities, relationships, transactions, and events so that insurers can see not just what happened, but how things are connected.  

This is where graph analytics becomes important. By mapping the relationships across people, organizations, policies, claims, addresses, and financial activity, insurers can surface patterns and dependencies that would otherwise remain hidden. For example, a workers’ compensation prospect may appear straightforward on the surface, but a connected network view could show that a newly appointed operations executive recently came from an organization with a poor safety and loss history. That kind of context may not be obvious in submission documentation alone, but it can materially change the risk picture. 

This is also where data products matter. For connected decision making to scale, insurers need data that is not only available, but resolved, contextualized, and structured for reuse across workflows, teams, and use cases. That means moving beyond isolated datasets and building trusted, decision-ready data products that bring together the right entities, relationships, and signals to support everything from underwriting and claims to customer intelligence and exposure management. 

Governance remains important, especially as AI adoption accelerates, and data volumes continue to grow. But for insurers, the bigger point is that decisions need to be explainable, auditable, and supported by trusted data inside regulated workflows. That is what allows organizations to move faster without sacrificing control. 

When intelligence is embedded into decision workflows and combined with behavioral signals and graph context, the value becomes even clearer. Insurers can improve risk assessment, strengthen fraud detection, and bring greater consistency to complex claims handling such as subrogation and litigation management. The same foundation can also support more relevant customer engagement and better service experiences. 

Taken together, these capabilities point to the value of a decision intelligence platform. Rather than managing data products, graph context, embedded intelligence, and governance as separate programs, insurers can bring them together through a single platform approach. That is what allows organizations to move faster, simplify delivery, and turn connected data into better decisions at scale. 

Build momentum through high-value decisions 

The good news is that insurers do not need to launch five separate programs to start moving in this direction. Nor do they need a full rip-and-replace transformation before they can begin creating value. A decision intelligence approach allows them to start with a focused set of high-value decisions and a small number of data sources, then expand from there. 

That approach allows insurers to prove value operationally, build trust in connected decision making, and create momentum without forcing the whole organization to change overnight. Over time, those early wins can support broader transformation across risk, claims, customer intelligence, and enterprise decision making.  

The insurers that move fastest will not be the ones investing in the most isolated tools. They will be the ones building a connected foundation for better decisions across the business. 

Download the Gartner report to see how insurers can turn connected, decision-ready data into faster, more informed decisions across the business. 

¹ Gartner, Top Data & Analytics Trends in Banking and Insurance for 2026. 

² Gartner, Top Data & Analytics Trends in Banking and Insurance for 2026.