Future-proofing the change function in insurance: From adoption to intelligent automation

As part of our ongoing roundtable series, ECMS hosted a Change & Transformation forum in our London office on Thursday 11th June, where we were joined by change leaders from leading insurance companies to discuss future-proofing Change and Transformation.

The conversation centred on aligning change programmes to strategic objectives, making informed decisions about how to deliver technology-led transformation, and how best to integrate automation and agentic solutions.

Here are key takeaways from James Godfrey and David Wright, members of our Advisory Panel who specialise in operating model design and large-scale change and shared hosting duties with ECMS Associate Director, Claudine Lott.

Stakeholder buy-in is still fundamental to adoption

Change inevitably encounters resistance. This was a theme of the previous roundtable in this discussion series, held in February 2026.

The consensus in the room was clear: when change programmes demonstrably improve people's working lives and are transparent in how they strategically align to wider business objectives, buy-in follows.

The difficult task is making that case persuasively to the people a programme affects.

As digital transformation leader James Godfrey describes it, transparent strategy alignment is the anchor:

“If an organisation has a strategy, the investments you're making are purely delivering that strategy.  Therefore, irrespective of individuals’ sentiment, a programme must speak to how the cascade of that strategy works through an organisation and how people understand that what they are doing is in service of that strategic direction."

Automate last, not first

Ambition for automation is clear across the sector, but digital transformation leader David Wright offered the room a vital reminder about the importance of challenging requirements first, before ensuring that sequencing automates the right process:

"The first step is making your requirements intelligent. Do you really know what you're asking for? If your original assumptions are wrong, everything else will be too.

"The second is to cut. In business, we're good at adding steps but not at removing them. Does this really need to exist? Only once you've got your requirements right and cut superfluous process should you optimise, then automate.”

Federated vs. centralised: a continual source of governance tension

How organisations balance centrally held change investment against locally held business unit budgets remains an important (if inconclusive) question.

The core tension is oversight: when investment and ownership are distributed, how do you maintain governance and leverage insight across the business?

This is ultimately a people and empowerment question; one that requires clearly defined operating models, consistent governance frameworks, and senior-level accountability to ensure the balance holds.

The room didn’t manage to come to a consensus view on this, but what was clear was that organisations that succeed are those that move beyond structure debates and instead embed clear and consistent decision rights, with visible accountability across whichever model they deploy.

The shift to product-led models is outpacing change capability

Many firms are transitioning from project-based to product-led operating models.

Appetite for large-scale programmes with longer ROI horizons is shrinking, as organisations favour shorter, outcome-driven delivery cycles. However, our participants have found that their change management approach hasn't kept pace.

Driving adoption across product teams and maintaining coherence at scale are emerging as the defining challenges, though neither challenge has a settled answer yet.

For firms navigating this shift, the capability gap is key. Building change functions that are structurally fit for product-led delivery, rather than retrofitting project-based approaches, is where the work lies.

We’ve seen the shift requires clearer frameworks, more frequent stakeholder updates, and robust governance at each milestone to be successful and deliver the intended benefits. The recruitment arm of Eames Group ran a deep dive session on Project vs Product, read our summary here.

Growing gap: from agentic ambitions to stalled pilots

Our survey of over 100 insurance leaders previously confirmed what the room reflected: technology adoption across the sector varies widely, and the gap between leaders and laggards is growing. 

At one end of the spectrum, a digital-first MGA is deciding whether to make credit control fully agentic, weighing the cost and timing of full automation against near-shore resourcing.

At the other, many organisations are still struggling to convert pilots into programmes, with one attendee sharing that they had "more pilots than British Airways"; a familiar lament.

Conclusion: Evolving approaches to adoption, governance, and automation delivers advantage

Is your delivery model built to hit strategic, tangible milestones, or are you stuck just trying to get through each day?

Sustained change outcomes depend on delivery models agile enough to scale resource where needed and comprised of the right skillsets to work in your set environment, whether project-based or product-led. 

As the insurance sector matures technologically, intelligent process sequencing and leaner operating models will increasingly separate firms with genuine competitive advantage from those struggling to keep pace.

ECMS offers an advisory-led managed solution built to deliver change and transformation at critical moments. Whether this be through fully managed project execution, embedding SME resources into a product-led transition or scaling your change function to meet evolving business need, we provide a flexible, scalable solution for any environment.

Many thanks to everyone who joined our discussion. We'll be sharing further insights from this series soon. If you'd like to discuss how to future-proof your change function, or would like to attend our next roundtable, please get in touch now.