Newsletter #05 — Our newsletter is reinventing itself in 2026 to become your monthly briefing. Every month, we pick out the insurance and brokerage news that matters. See you on the first Friday of every month at noon.
Topic of the month: AI in insurance
Brokers, wholesale brokers and insurers spend nearly 40% of their time on repetitive admin tasks: data entry, comparing quotes, pulling information out of PDFs. AI changes the game: it is becoming a genuine co-worker that can access your CRM, fetch quotes in real time and handle simple claims end to end, notably thanks to MCP (Model Context Protocol).
Contrary to popular belief, adopting AI doesn’t mean rebuilding your whole system. Modern platforms build these capabilities in natively. The key? Choosing management tools designed for AI from the outset, with structured data and open APIs.
What’s at stake: handling more clients with a better quality of service, while focusing on what really matters: advice and the client relationship. It’s a transformation that raises as many opportunities as practical questions.
📎 To dig deeper into AI in insurance, here are a few articles:
- How AI will become the broker’s right hand
- The MCP protocol: a revolution for insurance
- Why your management tool is the key to AI success
3 insurance stories from January 2026
Wholesale brokerage consolidation: a structural trend, not an opportunistic one
The Entoria group is being acquired by the HLD Europe fund. It’s not an isolated case: for several years now, wholesale brokerage platforms have been attracting more and more private equity funds.
Why it matters: wholesale brokerage is no longer seen as a mere sales intermediary, but as an industrial-scale distribution platform, a data player (portfolios, segmentation, technical steering) and a compliance relay for insurers.
🔎 Key takeaway: the market is professionalising fast; staying “artisanal” is becoming a strategic risk.
Source: L’Argus de l’assurance
Regulation & supervision: the ACPR’s 2026 roadmap shows where inspections will land
The ACPR (France’s insurance and banking supervisor) has published its 2026 work programme. The document is often underrated, yet it’s an excellent indicator of the year’s sensitive topics.
Priorities focus on:
- governance (roles, delegations, risk steering),
- control of operational risks (IT, providers, dependencies),
- financial resilience (stress tests, liquidity, solvency),
- alignment with European frameworks (DORA, AI, data, AML/CFT).
Concrete impact
👉 For insurers: expect tighter scrutiny of delegated providers, with closer attention to the entire value chain.
👉 For brokers & wholesale brokers: compliance is becoming a selling point, so those who aren’t “audit-ready” risk being delisted.
🔎 Key takeaway: the ACPR is sending a clear signal: tolerance for approximation is shrinking.
Source: ACPR
Reinsurance & market: rates ease in January 2026, but abundance isn’t back
The 1 January 2026 reinsurance renewals show lower rates across many lines, after several years of hardening.
🔎 How to read it:
- reinsurers’ underwriting results have improved,
- alternative capital (funds, sidecars) is coming back strongly,
- discipline remains in place for highly exposed risks.
Concrete impact
👉 For insurers: an opportunity to renegotiate some programmes.
👉 For brokers & wholesale brokers: some capacity may open up again, but with no letting up on risk quality.
🔎 Key takeaway: the cycle is softening, but selection remains demanding.
Other news at a glance
- 💰 Funding: French insurtech Stoïk has raised €20M to accelerate in cyber insurance for SMEs and mid-sized companies and push its European expansion.
- 💰 Funding: Kenko (a health insurtech for SMEs and mid-sized companies) announces a €4M raise.
- 🤝 Merger: Canadian brokers Navacord and Acera announced their merger in December 2025, creating the largest privately owned brokerage, with 150 offices, 5,000 professionals and a combined volume of $7.2 billion.
Events you might be interested in this February
- 🗓️ Rencontres du Risk Management AMRAE 2026, 4–6 February, in Deauville, on business risk, risk financing and corporate insurance.
- 🗓️ Semana del Seguro, 17–19 February, in Madrid: Spain’s leading insurance industry event, organised by INESE.
You may have noticed: your Korint newsletter is changing! Each issue now brings three in-depth analyses of industry events, a few key news items and the professional calendar for the month ahead.