Agility Assessment and Continuous Improvement platform

How Insights from Comparative Agility Drive Business Agility in the Insurance Industry

Overview

The insurance industry faces increasing pressure to modernize and adapt in a rapidly evolving market. From digital transformation to shifting customer expectations, insurers must embrace agility to remain competitive. The Insurance Agility Report, published by Scaled Agile and powered by Comparative Agility's data, highlights how Lean-Agile methodologies are transforming the sector.

With insights from 1,300 respondents across 26 countries, this report provides an unprecedented look at how insurance carriers are leveraging SAFe® (Scaled Agile Framework) and Comparative Agility's platform to enhance operational efficiency, leadership effectiveness, and customer-centric innovation.

Top Five Trends for Insurers Practicing Agility

The top survey items reflect a focus on people. Three of the Seven Core Competencies of SAFe enabiling business agility focus on developing and empowering people.

The teams apply Agile practices

4.34

The teams of Agile teams plan together on a cadence

4.3

We train our people in Agile

4.29

Our leaders exhibit an openness to an Agile way of working

4.26

Our leaders lead with authenticity

4.25

The Challenge

Insurers operate in a highly regulated and risk-sensitive environment, making large-scale change difficult. Traditional business models rely on rigid structures, hierarchical decision-making, and project-based funding-hindering adaptability and responsiveness to customer needs.

Key obstacles identified in the report include:

Siloed operations

Limiting collaboration between IT and business teams.

Lack of leadership buy-in

Slowing organizational transformation.

Inefficient funding models

Preventing rapid adjustments to market needs.

Challenges integrating suppliers

Into Agile development workflows.

Delayed customer feedback

Affecting product innovation and value delivery.

Without data-driven insights, insurance carriers struggle to measure Agile adoption, refine practices, and make informed decisions about scaling business agility.

Bottom Five Trends for Insurers Practicing Agility

Funding, suppliers and communication rank as areas for improvement in the bottom five trends for practicing Agility in insurance companies.

The teams apply Agile practices

4.34

We train our people in Agile

3.99

The teams apply Agile practices

3.89

We adopt a customer centric approach to defining our solutions

3.84

Our leaders exhibit an openness to an Agile way of working

3.82

The Solution

Comparative Agility empowers insurance companies by providing real-time, data-supported insights into their transformation efforts. Using our platform, insurers:

Assess their Agile maturity

against industry benchmarks

Identify strengths and weaknesses

in leadership, team agility, and customer-centricity

Track progress over time

ensuring continuous improvement

Make data-driven decisions

to refine Agile adoption strategies

Leverage comparative insights

from top-performing organizations to guide transformation

The Insurance Agility Report reveals that high-performing insurance carriers are prioritizing Agile leadership, team collaboration, and continuous learning—key focus areas tracked through Comparative Agility's assessment tools.

Tangible Impact

The report's findings confirm that insurance companies using Comparative Agility's platform experience significant improvements in business agility:

Enhanced Leadership Buy-in:

High-performing firms rank authentic leadership and openness to Agile among their top strengths.
Leadership transparency enables better decision-making and fosters a culture of adaptability.

Stronger Agile Adoption Across Teams:

The top survey item was "The teams apply Agile practices", showing a clear shift toward iterative, customer-driven product development.
Organizations that train employees in Agile outperform those that do not.

Better Customer-Centricity & Quality:

Insurers prioritizing Built-in Quality and customer-focused innovation report greater alignment with market needs.
The ability to update deployed solutions on demand is a critical differentiator for agile insurers.

Opportunities for Improvement in Funding & Supplier Integration:

Traditional project-based funding models remain a challenge.
Companies moving toward Lean Budgeting see faster decision-making and value delivery.
Agile supply chain integration lacks strong supplier collaboration.

Why Comparative Agility?

Comparative Agility is the world's largest agility assessment platform, providing insurance firms with actionable insights to accelerate their business transformation. The platform gives insurers a competitive advantage through the following key differentiators:

Unmatched Credibility and Trust

Our surveys are developed by recognized domain experts and rigorously validated by our team of data scientists using cutting-edge psychometric techniques. This ensures accuracy, reliability, and actionable insights that organizations can confidently rely on.

World's Largest Industry Benchmarks

With data collected from over 90 countries and 52,000 organizations across diverse industries, Comparative Agility offers the most comprehensive, validated industry benchmarks available—helping companies compare, adapt, and improve with precision.

Accelerate Decision-Making

Designed for transparency and enterprise-wide visibility, Comparative Agility empowers authorized users to optimize decision-making, break down silos, and drive holistic value creation across the organization.

Continuous Improvement at Scale

By leveraging real-time insights, organizations can identify meaningful improvement opportunities, refine Agile practices, and drive sustained progress—ensuring agility becomes a long-term competitive advantage.

Maximized Value for Investment

Organizations that act on Comparative Agility's data-driven insights achieve significant cost efficiencies, increased value creation, and improved market competitiveness - delivering returns that far exceed the initial investment in the platform.

The Insurance Agility Report underscores the importance of measuring, tracking, and optimizing Agile transformation—an effort made possible through Comparative Agility's cutting-edge analytics.

Conclusion

As the insurance industry navigates uncertainty and disruption, Comparative Agility's data-driven insights empower carriers to drive business agility at scale. By leveraging real-time benchmarking and continuous improvement, insurers can enhance efficiency, strengthen leadership, and build customer-centric solutions that thrive in today's dynamic market.