Technology is reshaping the broking process toward more cedent-centric collaboration, as increasingly technical cedents expect to actively participate in shaping their reinsurance strategies, driving growth with challenger brokers, according to Jerad Leigh, co-founder and CEO of Supercede, the independent reinsurance platform.
He explained, “The experience for cedents has been to send data to their brokers, wait for a few days or weeks, and then be presented with a summary and a strategy on how they should approach the upcoming reinsurance purchases.
“But as cedents become increasingly technical (powered by their own innovation efforts), they’re demanding that they be included more in this process and treated as an active collaborator.”
Leigh said that this development is not going unnoticed by brokers, noting that it is driving growth among challenger brokers.
“Every challenger broker that we speak with has set goals of being more cedent-friendly, collaborative, and easy to work with. They see the need to meet the cedents where they are and build collaboration into their core value proposition.
“Leaders of challenger brokers have come from the big two; they have seen where those solutions have been positioned and know first-hand the size of the opportunity if they focus on finding ways to get closer to their clients.
“But they also know that cedents don’t want countless different portals or ways to work with each broker. They’re leaning into solutions that are designed to be collaborative and that their cedents are already using. And they’re seeing it unlock opportunities to win new clients and grow their business with existing clients.”
Leigh anticipates that “cedent-centricity” and “cedent-collaboration” will be key themes for 2026.
He also discussed artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting the transformative impact it could have on the reinsurance industry, even if only part of its potential is realised.
However, Leigh noted that AI project failure rates within large enterprises have been reported as high as 95%.
“There are myriad reasons why this failure rate is so high but the simplest common thread would be the abandonment of first principles – teams and businesses losing focus of the core problem they’re trying to solve,” he said.
“This problem is more pronounced with AI because it’s easy to get caught up in the utopian future state that we’re promised. That problem will be especially true with reinsurance. With heaps of messy data, complex and nuanced contract terms, and the dynamic nature of the reinsurance purchasing process, it’s no wonder that we’re taken by the dream of an AI-powered universe that makes it all ‘easy’.”
For AI to have a meaningful impact on businesses, cedents, brokers and reinsurers, Leigh said it will need to start with hyper-specific use cases and select AI solutions that can clearly prove value.
“If successful, they can move on to the next area; rinse and repeat,” he said. “If companies maintain their first principles and start small, they can see meaningful value delivered through AI. If they don’t, they could see a sizeable investment vanish with nothing to show for it.”
Reinsurance News also recently interviewed Supercede’s Co-Founder and President Ben Rose, who spoke further on AI. He said he does not foresee a successful AI-driven reinsurance industry as things stand, but noted that if the sector reaches a point where it has “clean data flying around”, this would represent a major step change.
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