Nationwide: AI efforts
Nationwide (the US mutual, not the UK building society) has put real money behind AI: a $1.5 billion technology investment through 2028, with roughly $100M a year for AI, on top of more than a decade of predictive AI. Part of InsureBench's overview of AI in insurance; every figure is sourced.
Where Nationwide ranks on AI
Nationwide is featured in the 2026 Evident AI Index for Insurance.6 In October 2025 it committed $1.5B in technology investment through 2028, with ~$100M/year earmarked for AI, citing six already-scaled initiatives and 18 flagship use cases.1
Confirmed, in-production tools include claims gen-AI (Claims Log Notes, Call Transcript Summary), an advisor assistant (Sales Sidekick), and a DigitalOwl-powered life-underwriting platform — all under a "humans plus machines" philosophy.2
NA/Europe insurers
The AI build-out
From a decade of predictive AI to scaled generative-AI tools and a big investment commitment.
CLARA Analytics partnership
Nationwide partners with (and later invests in) casualty-claims AI vendor CLARA Analytics.5
GPT-4 for employees
Nationwide rolls out Bing Chat Enterprise (GPT-4) and details an AI Steering Committee plus Blue/Red team governance.3
DigitalOwl underwriting
An AI platform condenses hundreds of pages of medical records to a few for life underwriters.4
Gen-AI strategy
Nationwide details Sales Sidekick and Claims Log Notes among scaled generative-AI tools.2
$1.5B tech / $100M AI
Nationwide commits $1.5B through 2028, ~$100M/yr for AI, targeting 90% everyday-AI adoption by 2026.1
Evident AI Index
Nationwide is featured among the 30 ranked insurers.6
Inside the programme
Generative AI scaled into claims, sales and underwriting, governed by a human-in-the-loop model.
Claims Log Notes
Generative AI auto-summarises claim details for associates; paired with a Call Transcript Summary tool to cut after-call work.7
Sales Sidekick
A gen-AI assistant that cut advisor annuity research time from ~30 minutes to under five.2
DigitalOwl
An AI platform condensing medical records for faster life-underwriting decisions.4
NORA
A long-running customer virtual assistant for self-service claim status and product questions.2
"There must be a human in the loop. Our bionic world is humans plus machines."
Jim Fowler, CTO, Nationwide — Nov 20233Humans plus machines, with a Blue/Red team
Nationwide governs AI through an AI Steering Committee and a Blue team / Red team model — one exploring benefits, the other anticipating bias, misinformation and misuse — with a human kept in the loop on decisions.
Whether those AI-assisted decisions are right is exactly what an insurance AI benchmark measures.
- AI Steering Committee governs the programme
- Blue/Red team model weighs benefit vs. risk
- Human-in-the-loop on consequential decisions
- Targeting 90% everyday-AI adoption by 2026
Why this matters for benchmarking
Nationwide is scaling AI across claims, sales and life underwriting. The more decisions models drive, the more it matters whether they're right — which is what InsureBench measures. See the methodology.
Sources
- Nationwide — $1.5B investment to accelerate technology & AI (Oct 29 2025). news.nationwide.com
- Nationwide — Embracing the future: generative AI in insurance (Jun 5 2025). news.nationwide.com
- Nationwide — CTO Jim Fowler on generative AI (Nov 14 2023). news.nationwide.com
- Nationwide — Streamlining life underwriting with DigitalOwl (Feb 14 2024). news.nationwide.com
- BusinessWire — CLARA Analytics secures funding from Nationwide (Feb 21 2024). businesswire.com
- Evident Insights — AI Index for Insurance 2026. evidentinsights.com
- Claims Journal — Nationwide's $100M-a-year AI push in claims (Dec 31 2025). claimsjournal.com