2026 Agenda

Innovation responsibility has spread across insurance organisations faster than the capability to carry it. What used to sit with a central team now lives in underwriting, claims, distribution, strategy, and everywhere in between — closer to the problems, closer to the business. That's the right direction. But the tools, the frameworks, the networks and the playbooks haven't kept pace.

The people now expected to spot emerging technologies, evaluate startup partners, and make external innovation land commercially are often doing it alongside a full day job, with limited access to the intelligence, experience or peer connections that make it work. The challenge isn't motivation. It's infrastructure.

Join this peer-led working session, open to anyone across carriers, reinsurers and brokers with a stake in how their organisation innovates, whether that's in a dedicated innovation role or embedded in a line of business. Facilitated by Sønr, drawing on ten years of working alongside the world's leading insurers and authors of the Beyond Boundaries 2026 report, this is a candid, experience-first conversation about what the new model of innovation actually looks like in practice, and how to make it work when you're not starting from a blank slate.

What we'll cover:

• How leading insurers are making decentralised innovation work in practice, what changes when the centre shrinks and business units take ownership, and what gets harder
• What good looks like for teams operating without a dedicated innovation function, the tools, shortcuts and decision frameworks that turn external exploration into real commercial outcomes
• How to build the capability and confidence the new model demands, and avoid the traps that cause distributed innovation to fragment, duplicate, or quietly disappear