If You’re Competing on Back Office, You’re Losing the AI Race
The following article was originally published in Intelligent Insurer on 5 March, 2026:
The conversation around AI adoption has become inherent across the re/insurance industry, with key players striving to reach efficient, optimised workflows. A quieter debate emerging across the market revolves around building vs. buying AI infrastructure, and how to compete in such a rapidly changing field. One insurance-focused AI platform, fresh from securing a $50 million minority equity investment, argues the answer is straightforward. Insurers, reinsurers and brokers should not be competing with technology infrastructure at all.
Speaking exclusively to Intelligent Insurer, mea Platform’s CEO Martin Henley gave his view that too many technology projects in insurance start from the wrong premise: that firms must build proprietary systems to stay competitive. Mea has a different approach: “We market ourselves and sell ourselves as a buy platform,” Henley said.
Explaining what this looks like, Henley said: “We’ve focused on the areas of the insurance industry where, in my view, insurers, reinsurers or brokers, shouldn’t be competing with each other. Our focus is on the processing layer, how things are getting done, rather than the writing of the business.”
The recent investment is framed as acceleration and was always part of the growth plan. It will primarily support three pillars: go-to-market expansion, particularly in the US and Asia, increasing awareness of the platform’s capabilities, and ongoing product development and innovation to ensure the platform continues to complement the re/insurance industry.
Henley stressed that when it comes to AI adoption, re/insurers and brokers should focus on genuine success differentiators, such as underwriting talent and claims management, rather than on how back-office workflows and document integration might differ from company to company. In fact, Henley went as far as to say, “If you’re competing on back office, you’re not getting it right.” That layer should be concise yet effective; it doesn’t require duplicative technology infrastructure produced across different companies.
The Build Problem
These comments come as the market wrestles with the reality of AI deployment. According to Henley, a growing number of clients are arriving at mea after attempting to build their own tools or after engaging with products that require significant tailoring.
He explained that many companies initially attempt to build solutions in-house or adopt products that rely heavily on internal user input, which can be very difficult to obtain. Nine to 18 months later, they often discover the effort required was greater than expected and the solution remains incomplete.
Mea’s pitch is deliberately pragmatic: AI systems that “work out of the box” and deliver early returns.
That approach began with data ingestion, extracting structured data from unstructured submissions. Henley explained that what starts as extracting 20–30 fields of information can quickly scale to 100 fields.
The operational effect is cumulative. Once clean data is captured at the front end, underwriting triage accelerates, claims triage improves and broker response times shrink.
For carriers and MGAs operating in Bermuda’s high margin but competitive specialty market, speed is material. Faster turnaround “starts to impact margin and combined ratio in a very positive, meaningful way,” Henley said. And for MGAs in particular, “that directly impacts their enterprise value, and it does so quickly.”
AI Mandates and Market Nerves
AI adoption is no longer confined to innovation teams.
Henley explained many of their clients are now “receiving mandates from their C-suite and board to implement AI.” That top-down pressure is reshaping procurement conversations across the industry.
At the same time, public markets have reacted sharply to suggestions that AI could displace advisory roles, triggering bouts of broker stock volatility. Henley takes a measured view: “How much AI impacts brokers’ business, I think, is going to depend a little on the complexity. Some ‘simpler tasks’ may be automated. But the complex end, the strategy, the ’20 years of experience’ is still pretty difficult to replicate.”
Competitive advantage in re/insurance will come from smarter underwriting, sharper claims handling and better strategic judgment, not from building duplicative technology infrastructure. As boards push for AI adoption and the market grows wary of disruption, Henley’s argument is insurers, reinsurers and brokers should resist the urge to become tech builders and instead deploy proven, out-of-the-box systems that quickly unlock cleaner data, faster triage and improved margins.
Read the originally published version in Intelligent Insurer: https://www.intelligentinsurer.com/if-youre-competing-on-back-office-youre-losing-the-ai-race-mea-platform
