New data from Evident's Insurance AI Patent Tracker shows that AI innovation in the insurance sector remains highly concentrated. Three United States Property and Casualty insurers, State Farm, USAA, and Allstate, account for 77% of all AI patents filed over the past decade.

Since January 2023, 30 major insurers across North America and Europe have filed 166 AI patents. Although interest in generative AI has increased for claims and customer service, filings remain 30% below the 2020 peak.

Property and casualty insurers continue to dominate AI patent activity. The report shows that they hold 89% of all filings. Much of this innovation centers on telematics, IoT-driven risk monitoring, and other sensor-based systems that meet the technical contribution requirements for patent eligibility in the United States and Europe.

Generative AI patents rose significantly. They increased from 4% of filings to 31% in 2023. However, agentic AI remains uncommon. Only three insurers have pursued patents in this field, with USAA leading activity.

Strategic Applications and Competitive Implications for the Industry

The report highlights several notable applications. USAA is using generative AI to analyze aerial imagery for property damage assessment. State Farm employs machine learning for claims triage and autonomous vehicle fault analysis. Allstate has developed an in-vehicle AI assistant to automate claims and an interpretable AI for underwriting and document indexing. Liberty Mutual utilizes generative AI to generate release notes for its engineering teams. Zurich Insurance Group has created an AI system that standardizes and clears user-typed addresses.

From an industry standpoint, the concentration of AI patent filings reflects competitive and strategic implications. Leading P&C insurers are leveraging intellectual property to safeguard investments in emerging AI technologies that enhance claims processing, underwriting, and customer engagement. For smaller insurers, the patent gap indicates a potential challenge in keeping pace with competitors that are deploying AI-driven operational efficiencies.

Evident noted that the sector faces a critical decision about whether AI patents will remain concentrated among a few frontrunners or develop into a broader competitive tool. As generative and agentic AI reshape the value chain, insurers will need to determine whether to adopt intellectual property defensively or invest proactively to advance innovation across claims, risk management, and customer experience.

A new analysis examines how market concentration among commercial health insurers has shifted across the large group, small group, and individual markets from 2013 to 2023. The review uses enrollment data for fully insured and individual plans from Mark Farah Associates, along with data for self-funded plans for selected charts. It evaluates market competition through three measures. These include the market share of each state's largest insurer, the number of insurers within a state that hold at least 5 percent market share, and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which is a widely used metric to assess market concentration across industries.

Regulation and the market power of other healthcare stakeholders influence how consolidation affects prices and enrollee experience. High concentration may give insurers more leverage to negotiate lower payments to providers. However, limited competition may reduce incentives to lower enrollee costs and may restrict the choices available to purchasers.

Although insurer participation often varies within states, the analysis focuses on state-level data and national averages. These figures illustrate broad trends in competitiveness, but they may not fully reflect the local markets where consumers access coverage. Group market plans may cover employees who live across the country, while individual market plans often apply at the county or local level. In many cases, insurers do operate statewide.

Across commercial health insurance markets, concentration remained high between 2013 and 2023. However, the individual market became more competitive after 2020, while fully insured group markets became less competitive. Most people who purchase individual market coverage do so through the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces. Coverage purchased through the Marketplace often complies with ACA standards, which means it generally aligns with the designs of Marketplace plans.

Enrollment Dominance Among the Largest U.S. Parent Companies

The analysis also highlights that a small number of health insurers account for most enrollment in several major coverage categories. These include fully insured and self-funded private insurance, Medicaid Managed Care, Fee-for-Service type Medicaid programs, and Medicare Advantage. As of 2025, UnitedHealth, Elevance Health, and CVS Health are the three largest parent companies in the United States. Insurers often specialize in different markets. For example, most of Centene’s medical membership participates in Medicaid, while most of UnitedHealth’s medical membership participates in commercial insurance.