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Insurers face hidden data ownership risk in AI and tech vendor deals
Regulators are piloting an AI systems evaluation tool, and insurers say property data can become unusable if image updates stop when a vendor relationship ends.
Insurance technology deals are increasingly evaluated on speed and implementation, but Insurance Business highlights a quieter risk: what the carrier actually owns once the platform is working. As insurers lean on subscription-based tools and external data to improve underwriting, claims, property inspection, and risk monitoring, ownership of the underlying data becomes a strategic issue hidden inside technology contracts.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has formed a Third-Party Data and Models working group to develop a framework for regulators assessing third-party AI data and models. Its AI systems evaluation tool is being piloted by 12 states in 2026, reflecting how regulatory scrutiny is moving toward data and model ownership and governance within vendor relationships.
Insurance Business also points to how contract terms can affect operational decisions over time. Forestview Insights CEO Rob Galbraith described an effort to evaluate aerial imagery providers to obtain property images and repeated snapshots, so insurers can detect changes such as new structures, roof deterioration, vegetation shifts, and discrepancies between representations and existing conditions.
Galbraith said property data grows more valuable as it accumulates, since a sequence of images can support underwriting, claims handling, catastrophe exposure management, and discussions with reinsurers or regulators. In his example, images the carrier purchased remained the carrier’s to keep, while future updates would stop if the relationship ended, underscoring how subscriptions can create a form of lock-in around data ownership.