AI is forcing even insurance’s most cautious players to move fast

AI is driving healthcare digital transformation at an unprecedented pace, forcing insurance and healthcare organizations to modernize operations and decision-making while balancing speed with strong governance.

Healthcare and insurance are now being remade by AI — and for an industry built on caution and precedent, the pressure to transform is impossible to ignore. New technologies and growing adoption, even among the most slow-moving insurers, are accelerating change at a pace rarely seen, according to Jake Sloan (pictured), vice president of global insurance at Appian Corp.

“The industry itself — 300 years old. When you think about all the ebbs and flows it’s had over that time, one of the most profound changes [is] the speed that we’re seeing right now with all the capability that the industry has been receiving … and the willingness from insurers that have that conservative nature [to adopt],” he said. “The ability this year in particular to really go from pilot to production, we’re just seeing it at an unprecedented pace, which has been great.”

Sloan spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and co-host Alison Kosik at Appian World 2026, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed healthcare digital transformation efforts and the growing role of AI in modernizing core industry processes. (* Disclosure below.)

A healthcare digital transformation

The gap between customer expectations and traditional insurance experiences has never been wider — and the industry is racing to close it. Policyholders rarely seek out their insurer, but when a crisis hits, they demand the kind of frictionless, intuitive service they’ve come to expect from the best digital platforms. Growing interest in agentic AI highlights a shift toward proactive engagement, such as systems that can anticipate events like floods and automatically alert and support affected communities, according to Sloan.

“I still don’t see anybody that looks to interact with their insurer. However, when they do, they want an incredible experience that they have in their digital life, whether it be any big box retail or any kind of a progressive, low-effort, high-reward kind of experience,” he said. “Tech is truly creating just this incredible capacity for human empathy and for recovery at the community level, all coming together with all the rigid hard tech on the backside.”

Modernizing these industries means navigating a full spectrum of challenges, from automating isolated tasks to transforming end-to-end processes. At the same time, organizations must move quickly with innovation while ensuring strong safeguards to avoid costly or high-profile mistakes, according to Sloan.

“It’s understanding how you can have the best of both, where you can configure and go fast while also having the guardrails and then being able to put it back into a process,” he said. “We see so many proofs of concept or so many ideas around AI that is a task automation. It accelerates the task at the moment, but not the totality of the opportunity — whether that be member onboarding, whether that be looking at prior auth and some of the different healthcare processes. Being able to balance both is key.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Appian World 2026:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Appian World. Neither Appian, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE