The speed with which insurers across the world  are  implementing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is outstripping their capability to build the necessary infrastructure to control it.

Voice-based risk assessment, experts, Clearspeed, has published new research examining the growing challenge for insurers to move faster with AI and automation while determining whether the information those systems act on can be trusted.

“The Speed of Trust: Building the Trust Intelligence Layer for Insurance in the Age of Agentic AI”, commissioned by Clearspeed and authored by insurance innovation strategist Sabine VanderLinden, CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures, drew on a review of 76 public filings from 49 insurers and reinsurers, 31 industry studies, and 16 interviews with claims and underwriting leaders at insurance companies across the United States and United Kingdom.

The research identified a paradox emerging as insurers rapidly adopt AI and automation: the industry is automating decisions, handoffs, evidence review, and customer interactions faster than it is building the infrastructure needed to clear those interactions confidently. Simultaneously, AI is making it faster and easier to create convincing false or manipulated photos, documents, voices, and identities that can enter insurance workflows.

“Industry research published in March 2026, based on a survey of 300 U.S. insurance claims professionals, found that 98% agree AI editing tools are driving a rise in digital media fraud, while just 32% say they are very confident they could identify a deepfake,” said VanderLinden. “That is the verification gap: the distance between what the industry can see coming and what it can currently detect.

“Insurance is automating decisions faster than it can verify the information behind them.”

The analysis found:

• Zero mentions of synthetic media, synthetic identity, or voice cloning across all 76 filings
• Just six of 49 companies mention deepfakes — and only as a cybersecurity concern, never in connection with evidence used in claims or underwriting decisions
• Five of the world’s top 10 reinsurers were analysed; none mention deepfakes, synthetic media, or AI-generated evidence in their most recent annual reporting

“There is a striking gap between where this risk is discussed and where capital is committed,” said VanderLinden. “In the filings that set reserves, uncertainty, litigation pressure, and adverse development are all named. The trust problem beneath them is not.”

Most claimants are genuine. According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, fraud accounts for roughly 10% of property and casualty losses, with the trust deficit draining at least $308.6 billion annually from the U.S. insurance system.

But the report added the deeper issue is not simply the cost of fraud alone. Until insurers have a consistent way to determine which interactions need speed, scrutiny, or human judgment, the industry pays for trust twice: once through leakage from the few bad actors, and again through friction imposed on the genuine majority.

“90%+ of customers who make a claim are honest, good people for whom we should be just sorting out their service needs as quickly as possible,” Ian Thompson, former group chief claims officer at Zurich Insurance, told researchers. “But how many of those genuine customers get the feeling that they’re not being trusted, because we’re trying to catch the other 10%?”

In the report, VanderLinden argued that insurers should work to address this challenge by making trust a measurable infrastructure layer across the policyholder journey.

Rather than using more AI merely to catch more fraud, insurers should establish a Trust Intelligence Layer: a continuous, regulator-ready risk indicator running across the policyholder journey that is designed to help insurers clear the genuine majority quickly while directing human judgment to the exceptions.

The signal informs a decision rather than making one, produces an audit trail rather than an automated denial, and does not require demographic or historical knowledge of the individual being assessed.

“In the age of agentic AI, deepfake evidence, embedded distribution, and automated workflows, insurers can no longer treat trust as a soft value or a late-stage consideration. The opportunity for carriers is to establish trust earlier and make it a measurable operating layer across the policyholder journey,” explained VanderLinden.

“Trust is our most vital currency: it is the hardest thing to gain and the easiest thing to lose,” said Alex Martin, co-founder and CEO of Clearspeed. “Today’s promise of AI should yield a faster, richer experience for genuine customers, but that must begin with verifying where to extend trust.”