ITC Vegas 2026: What Matters, Who Matters, and the Trends Worth Tracking
About 9,000 people will be at Mandalay Bay next week, and most of the programming is about AI. That's expected. What gets less airtime is the state of the balance sheets these AI projects are supposed to improve, and that context changes which sessions and conversations are worth your time.
The short version: U.S. P&C results are the best they've been in years, and the pricing cycle turned at about the same time. When rates are rising, a carrier or MGA can carry a fair amount of operational inefficiency and still hit its numbers. When rates fall, it can't. That's the backdrop for every AI pitch you'll hear next week.
This piece has three parts. The first covers the market conditions going into ITC. The second covers the six trends I think define this year's event, and where each shows up on the agenda. The third is the practical part: who's there, which sessions to prioritize, where the off-agenda conversations happen, and what I'll be watching for.
Part One: The Market Going Into ITC
The Basics
The formal agenda runs Tuesday, September 29 through Thursday, October 1. The week actually starts Monday with a golf tournament at Bali Hai and runs into Friday after Thursday's closing party with the Gin Blossoms. All sessions are in the Mandalay Bay Conference Center.
Organizers expect 9,000+ attendees, 500+ speakers, 600+ exhibitors and 1,900+ carriers. Roughly one badge in five belongs to a carrier, and a large share of the rest belong to people who want a meeting with one. That ratio explains a lot about how the week works.
The official theme is "The Horizon of Possibilities: Predict, Prepare, Progress," built around how climate, technology, regulation and human behavior are changing risk. The agenda itself is more specific than the theme. Most of it is about AI moving into underwriting, claims, distribution and operations.
The Results Look Better Than the Underwriting
The headline numbers are strong. APCIA and Verisk put the industry combined ratio at 92.7 for the first half of 2026, down from 96.5 a year earlier, with a $31.7 billion underwriting gain and surplus up to $1.30 trillion from $1.13 trillion. AM Best had full-year 2025 at 92.9 with a $60.9 billion underwriting gain.
A few things are propping those numbers up.
Catastrophe losses were light. AM Best estimates cats added 6.2 points to the first-half 2026 combined ratio, versus 10.8 points in the first half of 2025.
Reserve releases are doing a lot of work. In Q1 2026, AM Best had a reported combined ratio of 92.0 but an accident-year ratio of 96.6 after excluding $10.9 billion of favorable development. For all of 2025, $18.1 billion of favorable development meant the accident-year ratio was 94.9, two points worse than reported.
Growth is slowing. Net written premium grew 2.1% in the first half of 2026, compared with 5.2% in the first half of 2025, which APCIA attributes to a more competitive market.
None of this means the industry is in trouble. Current accident-year results are fine. But reported profitability is running a few points ahead of underlying profitability, and premium growth is flattening. Those are the conditions under which expense ratios start getting attention again.
Property Is Softening, Casualty Isn't
Marsh reports global commercial rates fell 6% in Q2 2026, the eighth straight quarterly decline, with property down 12% and casualty up 2%. U.S. property rates fell 13%, and catastrophe-exposed programs over $1 million in premium were down 20%.
Reinsurance is pushing in the same direction. Guy Carpenter's global property cat rate-on-line index is down 16% through midyear, the biggest annual drop since the late 1990s. Aon estimates global reinsurer capital at a record $790 billion as of March 31.
U.S. casualty is moving the other way. Casualty rates rose 7% in Q2 after 9% in Q1, and the U.S. was the only region where they went up. AM Best's 2025 figures explain why: commercial auto ran a 103.5 combined ratio, medical professional liability 106 and other/products liability 108. Milliman found U.S. carriers took $7.8 billion of adverse prior-year development across liability lines in 2024, more than double the $3.7 billion in 2023.
Howden Re made a point in its June renewal report that I agree with: reinsurance prices keep falling even as the gap between pricing and the underlying risk keeps widening.
For AI, the split matters because the problems are different. In property, pricing pressure makes cost the main lever. In long-tail casualty, the bigger issue is still losses and reserves.
Expenses Grew Faster Than Premium Last Year
This is the figure I'd most like people to look at before walking the expo floor. In 2025, net written premium grew 4.7% to $940.7 billion. Underwriting expenses grew 7.1% to $241.2 billion. So in a very good underwriting year, expenses outpaced premium.
The NAIC data shows the same trend over several years, with the industry underwriting expense ratio moving from 24.9% in 2023 to 25.3% in 2024 and 25.8% in 2025.
If premium grows around 2% this year and expense growth doesn't slow down a lot, the expense ratio goes up again. At roughly $940 billion of premium, one point of expense ratio is worth about $9.4 billion of industry underwriting profit. That's my arithmetic, but it gives a sense of scale for what operational AI business cases are competing for.
Efficient operators already show what the gap looks like. Kinsale ran a 21.7% expense ratio and a 75.5% combined ratio in Q2 2026. That's a GAAP figure and not directly comparable to statutory industry numbers, but a difference that size shows up in results year after year, and it matters more when rates are falling.
Casualty Reserves and the Claims File
Most AI discussion in insurance centers on underwriting. I think casualty claims may end up being worth more.
AM Best has described how one nuclear verdict raises settlement expectations on other open claims, which makes existing reserves inadequate and eventually feeds into pricing. Swiss Re estimated social inflation averaged 5.4% a year from 2017 to 2022, against 3.7% economic inflation. Insurance Insider has also written about casualty claims handling being hurt by years of underinvestment.
The reserving side is where this connects to AI. Loss development factors come from historical patterns. When severity rises faster than those patterns assume, ultimate losses get underestimated, and the errors build up over several accident years before they're visible. Getting earlier signals out of claim files (attorney involvement, medical escalation, coverage disputes) gives carriers a chance to adjust reserves or settle sooner. Given where casualty pricing sits relative to trend, even small improvements in litigated claim severity would be worth a lot.
Part Two: The Six Trends That Define ITC 2026
Trend 1: Moving From Pilots to Production
The biggest theme on the agenda is the gap between AI that demos well and AI that runs a book of business, and some of the session titles are blunt about it. Thursday's main stage has Nationwide's P&C CTO Guru Vasudeva and Goosehead's Chief Client Experience Officer Charl Lombard on moving AI from pilots to deployed solutions with measurable impact, under the title "Stop Buying AI. Start Shipping It." On Tuesday, Datos Insights runs a summit on why AI transformations stall, and Celent runs one on the countdown to agentic insurance. The Modern Underwriter Summit closes with HDI Global US COO Justin Gress on what it takes to run AI across an underwriting book in production every day, trusted by the people using it.
The research behind this is worth knowing. The MIT Project NANDA report from last year is usually quoted for its claim that about 95% of organizations saw no measurable P&L impact from generative AI. Two of its other findings are more useful for insurance. More than half of generative AI budgets went to sales and marketing, but the biggest returns showed up in back-office automation: replacing outsourced processing, cutting agency costs and streamlining operations. And buying from specialized vendors and building partnerships worked about 67% of the time, while internal builds worked about a third as often. The lead author also said nearly every enterprise they visited was trying to build its own tool, which was especially common in regulated industries like financial services.
The report wasn't peer reviewed and the full dataset hasn't been published, so I wouldn't treat the 95% figure as precise. The direction matches what I see, though. Carriers tend to fund customer-facing AI, while most of the expense sits in underwriting operations, servicing, claims administration and bordereaux.
The funding market is lining up behind this. Gallagher Re reports Q2 2026 insurtech funding of $2.44 billion, the highest since Q2 2022, with 99.1% going to AI-focused companies. Early-stage funding fell 51.8% from Q1, and rounds of $100 million or more made up 68.4% of the total. The median deal size hit $10.0 million in Q1 2026, almost double the $5.3 million median at the 2021 peak. Many of those well-funded companies now need production customers to support their next raise, which gives carriers more room than usual to negotiate outcome-based terms.
A useful rule for the week: a session with a carrier executive describing their own production results is worth more than one where a vendor describes a customer who isn't on stage.
Trend 2: AI Governance Becomes an Evidence Requirement
As of July 2026, 25 jurisdictions had adopted the NAIC Model Bulletin on insurers' use of AI, while California, Colorado, New York and Texas operate under their own frameworks. The bulletin is also becoming part of exams. The NAIC's evaluation tool asks carriers for an inventory of AI systems, sample case files showing how AI fed into decisions, fairness testing documentation and vendor governance records. In practice, carriers need to be able to show, on paper, that their AI was tested before deployment and monitored afterward.
The agenda reflects this. Tuesday's AI summit includes Arch Capital Services and Workday on governing AI agents with controls for permissions, accountability, cost, auditability and performance. On Wednesday, Hippo's Chief Risk Officer and its Chief Product and AI Officer join Monitaur to argue that a good governance program actually unblocks committees and speeds up adoption. Later that afternoon, Digital Insurance's editor-in-chief Daniel Wolfe moderates a panel on who owns model decisions inside an insurer.
I think the Hippo framing is where most carriers will end up. For the last few years governance was treated mainly as a brake. Carriers that treat it as the process for getting AI approved and documented will probably deploy faster than the ones that treat it as an obstacle. One of this year's pitch finalists, Trussed AI, is built entirely around helping insurers govern and control AI systems in real time, which says something about where founders think the demand is.
Trend 3: AI Liability, Exclusions First and Affirmative Coverage Next
I think this is the trend attendees focused on operations are most likely to underweight. Insurers are both buyers of AI and the market that will have to price its failures, and so far the response on the coverage side has mostly been to exclude it. ISO's three generative AI exclusions for commercial general liability (CG 40 47, CG 40 48 and CG 35 08) took effect with a January 2026 edition date, and W. R. Berkley has broader absolute AI exclusions on D&O, E&O and fiduciary lines. Verisk is now looking at exclusions aimed at agentic AI.
This follows the same path as cyber. In 2019, Lloyd's required its market to state clearly whether policies covered or excluded cyber, which moved the market from silent coverage toward explicit exclusions and later standalone products. AI looks like it's going through that faster.
ITC puts the next step on the main stage. Thursday features Swiss Re, Aon, QBE Ventures and McDermott Will & Schulte on insuring AI liability, including a first look at an AI Liability Heat Map based on nearly 90 incidents. On Tuesday, Mayflower Specialty's CEO Jeremy Epstein joins a session on the insurability of AI risks.
There's also a connection to Trend 2 that I think gets overlooked. The documentation carriers are building for regulators (testing, monitoring, accountability, vendor oversight) is close to what their own underwriters will want from insureds before offering affirmative AI coverage. Carriers that go through that process internally will have a head start on underwriting it externally. If you work in specialty, E&S, cyber or professional lines, the Thursday panel is where the first real loss data on this is likely to come up.
Trend 4: MGA Growth Meets Capital Discipline
Conning estimates U.S. MGA premium reached about $128 billion in 2025, with statutory MGA direct written premium up 12%, more than twice the roughly 5% growth of the broader P&C market. Delegated authority isn't a niche channel anymore, and that's why the MGA content at ITC has grown into a full summit.
The terms are tightening, though. AM Best moved its outlook on delegated authority from positive to stable, citing moderate growth, tighter renewal economics and more scrutiny of partners. It also says reinsurers have shifted since 2023 toward shorter contracts, higher attachment points and heavier data requirements. Most MGA premium is written under non-exclusive contracts, so carriers can exit underperforming segments more easily.
The fronting market is where that scrutiny is most visible. Hybrid fronting carriers wrote nearly $28 billion of gross premium by the start of 2025, per Gallagher Re, and new ones keep launching. Aviva just started a hybrid fronting unit and cited reinsurer demand for MGA business along with increased scrutiny of some specialist fronts. There's reason for that scrutiny: Markel took a $205 million reserve after collateral supporting reinsurance recoverables at State National fell short when a capacity provider went bankrupt, and after Vesttoo, some jurisdictions tightened collateral verification.
The Wednesday Capacity Connect Summit covers all of this. The panel on what capital wants in 2026 describes capacity providers as more selective, more data-driven and more focused on portfolio visibility than before. The CEOs of Counterpart, Kettle, Coterie and Shepherd discuss building the MGAs of the future, moderated by The Insurer's James Thaler. The day ends with a live market where reinsurers, carriers and fronting partners say where they're actively deploying, with Munich Re Specialty, Aquiline, Scale Venture Partners and Barkr. There's also a case study on Private Client Select going from carve-out to launch in seven months with Instanda and Deloitte.
My take is that capacity is plentiful and cheap for property, but carriers and reinsurers want much better data before they commit it. MGAs with clean, timely bordereaux and portfolio reporting will get better terms. The ones that can't produce that data will find capacity harder to get, even in a well-capitalized market.
Trend 5: E&S Is Writing More Policies for Less Money
WSIA's midyear numbers show surplus lines premium in the 15 stamping office states up 2.8% to $47.6 billion in the first half of 2026, while item filings rose 16.9% to 4.3 million. Property premium fell 13.7%. Non-professional liability grew 11.2% and now makes up 39.6% of the total, with professional liability up 15%, auto liability 15.8% and inland marine 12.3%.
Working through those figures, average premium per filed item dropped about 12% year over year. The market is getting busier without getting proportionally bigger. For wholesalers and MGAs, a lot of the work (clearance, intake, data entry, quoting, binding) scales with the number of submissions, while revenue scales with premium. When those two diverge, margins get squeezed.
I've seen this on the brokerage side before. Processes that were tolerable at double-digit premium growth start to hurt when growth drops to low single digits, and the firms that built capacity earlier handle the transition much better than the ones trying to fix it mid-cycle. The mix shift makes it harder, because liability submissions tend to be heavier on documents and loss runs, and slower to underwrite.
That's the context for a lot of Tuesday's Commercial and Specialty Summit: Ki Insurance and Mylo on agentic API trading in specialty, Laserfiche on handling submission packages full of applications, ACORD forms, schedules and loss runs, and the Arch and Zurich North America COOs on commercial lines analytics. The property softening also sets up the parametric session with Bold Penguin, Adaptive Insurance and Palomar's Chief Legal Officer.
Trend 6: Distribution Is Being Rewired From Both Ends
Falling rates hit brokers directly, since most revenue is commission on premium. MarshBerry counted 241 announced U.S. brokerage deals through May 2026, down 5.1% from a year earlier, with private capital-backed buyers accounting for 70.5%. Its midyear report describes buyers getting more selective because of slower organic growth, higher-for-longer rates and general uncertainty.
AI is the second pressure. PwC's insurance deals leader said uncertainty about AI disruption has led to more deal scrutiny and lower valuations for public brokers, and that AI could weigh on broker valuations if it changes how distribution works. MarshBerry said something similar in Q1, calling insurance-focused AI a variable that wasn't really in the picture a year earlier.
On the agency side, AI is going into placement workflows. Bolt's in-house agency is presenting results under the title "41% More Binds," and Applied Systems brings Liberty Mutual and Travelers on stage to talk about agentic AI handling the coordination work that slows commercial placement. On the customer side, Stripe, MetLife Pet and Fletch will discuss consumers using ChatGPT, Gemini and AI agents to research, compare and buy insurance. A Wednesday panel with the CEOs of AgentSync and Warrant covers aggregator dependency, rising paid media costs, embedded competition and broker fatigue.
I think AI helps some distributors and hurts others. Consolidators need margin expansion to justify what they paid, and AI is probably the most realistic way to get it. Brokers that mostly place simple, transactional business are more exposed, particularly if customers start comparing products through AI assistants. I'd expect personal lines and small commercial to feel this first, and complex commercial and specialty last.
Two Other Things Worth Tracking
Fraud has changed. SAS, AWS and FDS will argue that digital forgeries have overtaken physical ones and are showing up in claims globally. State Farm Ventures and Proof go further, arguing that AI has made traditional risk-score approaches to fraud unreliable because documents, faces and voices can all be faked.
Autonomy is becoming a coverage question. Apollo's iBott president Chris Moore and Skyward Group Chairman and CEO Andrew Robinson take the Wednesday main stage on how insurers should think about liability and underwriting for autonomous vehicles, drones and robotics.
Part Three: Working the Week
Who's in the Building
The speaker list is a decent proxy for which organizations are sending senior people.
Carriers and reinsurers: USAA, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Travelers, Zurich North America, Tokio Marine, Arch, The Hartford, Hanover, HDI Global US, Palomar, Ascot, MSIG Holdings, Allianz, Munich Re Specialty, Swiss Re, State Farm, Hippo, Fortegra, Spinnaker, RGA, Primerica, MetLife, Mapfre, CSAA, Chubb, Berkshire Hathaway GUARD and Pharmacists Mutual.
MGAs, program players and specialty builders: Counterpart, Kettle, Coterie, Shepherd, Accelerant, Ki Insurance, Honeycomb, Mayflower Specialty, Steadily, Private Client Select and Adaptive Insurance.
Distribution and distribution tech: CRC Group, Goosehead, H.W. Kaufman Group, Bold Penguin, Applied Systems, Vertafore, Zywave and AgentSync.
Capital: Aquiline, Scale Venture Partners, American Family Ventures, IA Capital, Plug and Play, QBE Ventures, State Farm Ventures, Viewpoint Ventures and Alchemy Crew.
Advisors and analysts: Deloitte, EY, PwC, WTW, Aon, Celent, Datos Insights, Everest Group, CB Insights and Simon-Kucher.
Platforms: Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Stripe, Mastercard and Plaid.
Two things stand out. The carrier list skews toward companies with active, public AI programs, so their sessions tend to be more concrete than usual. And capital providers are unusually well represented on stage, mostly because of Capacity Connect, which tells you how central access to capacity has become.
Tuesday, September 29: Summit Day
Tuesday is organized around half-day and full-day summits. You'll get more from staying in one than from moving between several.
AI strategy and carrier operations, in the AI-Powered Insurance Innovation Summit:
9:30 AM: Tokio Marine North America CIO Robert Pick and USAA's Head of AI and Product Innovation Sai Vishnubhatla on orchestrating AI across operations
10:10 AM: Federato CEO Will Ross on why some insurers get value from AI and others don't
11:00 AM: Hippo's Chief Data Officer, Sedgwick's Chief Transformation Officer and The Zebra's Chief AI Officer
12:05 PM: Arch and Workday on governed agents at scale
2:55 PM: CRC Group's David Hurst and Accelerant's Chief Data Science and AI Officer Kenny Holms on turning data into strategic value
4:00 PM: Build, buy or partner, with USAA, ZestyAI, Falcon Risk Services and Honeycomb's COO
E&S, specialty and MGAs, with Commercial and Specialty in the morning and the Modern Underwriter Summit in the afternoon:
10:20 AM: Ki Insurance and Mylo on agentic API trading
10:45 AM: Parametric with Bold Penguin, Adaptive Insurance and Palomar
11:30 AM: The Arch and Zurich North America COOs on commercial lines analytics
1:05 PM: Priorities of the modern chief underwriting officer, with Steadily founder Darren Nix
1:55 PM: The Hartford's head of Y-Risk Labs and Hanover's VP of Risk Solutions on predictive risk
3:55 PM: Mayflower Specialty on the insurability of AI risks
4:20 PM: HDI Global US on running AI across the underwriting book
Claims: the Claims Transformation and Fraud Summit, including Lyft's Head of Claims, Clearcover's COO and BluePond.AI's CEO on automating claims, and MSIG Holdings with Isomer on intake data.
Life, health and benefits: the Health Connect Summit, with Indigo's CEO on pricing risk from healthcare claims data, Allianz and Taktile on agentic processing across millions of health claims, and YuLife's CEO with Mellie on GLP-1 costs in employer health plans.
Independent agents: ITC Agents, $995 all-inclusive for agent-only Tuesday content plus full ITC access, including an open forum for agency principals led by Jason Cass and Mitch Gibson.
Corporate development: the Viewpoint Ventures summit, noon to 3:30 PM.
First-timers orientation runs 2:00 to 3:00 PM, and the official kickoff party runs 5:00 to 7:00 PM.
The Pitch Competition
The fifth annual State Farm Startup Pitch Competition has ten finalists, five minutes of pitch and five minutes of Q&A each, with the audience voting. The winner presents on the Thursday main stage and gets a free kiosk at ITC Vegas 2027. The agenda lists the pitches Tuesday from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, but the competition page's own summary says October 1, so check the app for the final time.
This year's finalists:
Friendly: AI for medical and financial underwriting and claims at life and disability insurers
InQuery: turning medical and legal records into structured information for claims and litigation
Prediction Lab: people and AI agents building predictive models together, including for pricing
Producerflow: producer management from onboarding to compliance
Phyll: a continuously updated, auditable record of infrastructure conditions from existing cameras
Salvato: an end-to-end total loss vehicle workflow
Structify: connecting policy, claims and admin data into one model of the business
Trussed AI: real-time governance and control of AI systems
Warrant: AI compliance review for insurance marketing against federal and all 50 state rules
Fair Warranty: a simpler vehicle breakdown protection product
Several of them (Structify, Trussed AI, Warrant, Producerflow) are building data, governance or compliance infrastructure rather than front-end tools, which lines up with Trends 1 and 2. It's also a reasonable place to spot future speakers. Faura won in 2024, and this year its co-founder and CTO Amanda Southworth is speaking at the Modern Underwriter Summit.
Wednesday, September 30: Main Stage and Capital
The 8:15 AM main stage block has CNBC's Contessa Brewer moderating Daymond John and Cambridge Mobile Telematics CEO William V. Powers, the autonomy session, a panel on AI readiness with Microsoft, EY and Tokio Marine's International AI Hub, and Alex Honnold on risk and preparation.
After that, the most substantive content is spread across three stages.
Capacity Connect, from 10:30 AM through the 2:50 PM live market.
Innovation Through Growth:
11:15 AM: AgentSync and Warrant on acquisition costs
11:40 AM: USAA and bolt on connected distribution
12:05 PM: Fortegra's Chief Innovation, Data Science and Technology Officer on AI at enterprise scale
2:00 PM: Stripe, MetLife Pet and Fletch on agentic commerce
3:45 PM: SURE, Mylo and Coterie on embedded insurance
AI in Action:
11:05 AM: Nationwide and Quantiphi on modernizing program business and bordereaux
11:40 AM: Hippo and Monitaur on governance
1:30 PM: Ascot Group's U.S. Chief Claims Officer Marina Barg on agentic AI in claims
2:40 PM: Palomar's COO Rudy Hervé and Pace's CEO Jamie Cuffe, who will describe how Palomar uses AI agents on policyholder calls and emails
3:15 PM: The AI accountability panel moderated by Digital Insurance
Community programming on Wednesday includes the Black Leadership Meet-up from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, VC Office Hours from 2:30 to 4:00 PM, the Women's Leadership Forum from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, and a C-Suite Reception for carrier executives from 5:00 to 7:00 PM.
Thursday, October 1: The Main Stage Worth Getting Up For
I think Thursday's main stage is the strongest of the week: the AI liability panel, the Nationwide and Goosehead session, and Owl.co CEO Sean Merat with WSIB CEO Jeff Lang on AI in workers' compensation. Jonathan Scott of Scott Brothers Global also talks home resiliency with KTLA's Rich DeMuro, and the pitch winner gives a live demo.
Later in the day, the Founders Forum runs 10-minute fireside chats with founders and investors from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, and Simon-Kucher runs a masterclass on insurtech monetization and sales strategy from 10:30 AM to 2:00 PM. Cyber programming and the last day of the expo floor fill out the rest.
Speakers I'd Prioritize
Operators with production responsibility: Palomar's COO on servicing, HDI Global US's COO on underwriting, Nationwide's P&C CTO on deployment, and Ascot's Chief Claims Officer. They own the outcomes they're describing.
Capital providers: Munich Re Specialty, Aquiline, Scale Venture Partners and American Family Ventures in the live market, IA Capital's Christy Lane moderating two health panels, and Plug and Play's Eugenio Gonzalez on build, buy or partner. What they've stopped funding is often as useful as what they're funding.
MGA founders: the Counterpart, Kettle, Coterie and Shepherd panel is the most direct discussion of what makes an MGA investable in 2026.
The AI liability panel, for the reasons in Trend 3.
Analysts: Celent, Datos Insights and Everest Group see patterns across many carriers, which balances out the single-customer stories in most vendor sessions.
Moderators: Contessa Brewer, Daniel Wolfe, James Thaler and Rich DeMuro tend to ask the follow-up questions that make a session useful.
Off-Agenda Events
A lot of business at ITC happens at private events listed under ITC Vegas Week. Most need an RSVP or invite request, and some are restricted by attendee type.
Tuesday evening:
Duck Creek's Executive Pour at Rhythm and Riffs, 4:00 to 6:00 PM
Sixfold's Opening Night with Mphasis, Realytix Zero by Munich Re and Inforce, 4:30 to 7:30 PM
Swingers Crazy Golf with AMEX, ePayPolicy and Vertafore, 5:00 to 8:00 PM
Insurtech on Tap at Rí Rá, co-hosted by AWS, Cloverleaf Analytics, Five Sigma, Deloitte, GhostDraft, Radity and Soteris
Shift's whiskey tasting at 1923 Prohibition Bar, limited to carrier professionals
Adobe and DEPT's invite-only P&C growth dinner at Stripsteak
Wednesday:
Kyber's P&C claims lunch at Rí Rá, built around a Guinness Perfect Pint certification
The Room, hosted by Contessa Brewer and Shift Technology's Jeremy Jawish at the 33 Members Room in the Vinyl Lounge, 4:15 to 6:15 PM
WTW's client dinner at Bourbon Steak
SAS and AWS's Above the Strip at BrewDog for senior insurance executives
ZestyAI at the Four Seasons Press Patio, the InsurTech Association at Rí Rá, McDermott Will & Schulte at Stripsteak, plus TCS and FICO, IntellectAI, insured.io, Toptal and Home Factors
The closing party Thursday night is open to badge holders.
What I'm Watching For
Whether carrier speakers talk about cost per policy or per claim, or mostly about use cases.
Whether anyone connects AI to casualty reserving. I haven't seen much of that yet.
How capacity providers in the live market describe property versus liability appetite, given the WSIA and Marsh numbers.
Any sign that incident data is good enough to start pricing affirmative AI coverage.
Whether carriers describe AI governance as a compliance cost or as something that helps them deploy faster.
Which pitch finalist wins. The audience vote is a rough but real read on what the room thinks is most urgent.
Three Predictions
The 2026 industry underwriting expense ratio will come in at or above 2025's 25.8% on the NAIC basis. Premium growth is slowing faster than expenses can adjust, and AI savings won't be visible in industry totals until 2027 or 2028.
Year-end 2026 results will show more adverse prior-year development in commercial auto and other liability, while property and workers' comp keep releasing reserves.
ITC Vegas 2027 will have a dedicated AI liability track, and fewer session titles will use the word "pilot."
Practical Notes
The Mandalay Bay and W Las Vegas room blocks were sold out as of the organizer's July 8 update, and Connections Housing is the only official housing provider. Luxor connects to Mandalay Bay by indoor walkway.
Expo floor meeting tables can be reserved through the ITC app, with an extra second-floor meeting zone on Tuesday. CB Insights also runs a Discovery Desk with partnership recommendations, open 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
The organizers say the agenda is still being updated and times may change, so confirm sessions in the app before building your schedule around them.
The Takeaway
Industry results are strong, but a good part of that comes from light cat losses and reserve releases, and premium growth is slowing as rates fall. That shifts attention to expenses in property and to losses in casualty. The six trends on this year's agenda (production over pilots, governance evidence, AI liability, MGA capital discipline, the E&S workload squeeze and changes in distribution) all connect back to those two pressures. For AI, the useful question next week is which tools reduce those costs in production, and by how much. I'll be spending most of my time at the sessions and conversations where someone can answer that with numbers.
Fabio Faschi is an Insurance Technology leader, National Producer, Board Member of the Young Risk Professionals New York City chapter and Committee Chair at RISE with over a decade of experience in the insurance industry. He has built and scaled over a dozen national brokerages and SaaS-driven insurance platforms. Fabio's expertise has been featured in publications like Forbes, Consumer Affairs, Realtor.com, Apartment Therapy, SFGATE, Bankrate, and Lifehacker.
