Once again, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas showcased the cutting edge of innovation, offering a glimpse into the technologies shaping our future. For insurance professionals, CES 2025 highlighted trends and technologies that can help redefine risk management, customer experience, and operational efficiency.
During our week at the event, the ReSource Pro team identified three themes that carry profound implications for the insurance industry by helping them stay ahead in a rapidly evolving technological environment.
The shift from cloud to edge computing
At CES 2025, we saw a consistent focus on making AI accessible to everyone. As a result, more companies are seeing the benefit of edge computing – a happy medium between processing data locally and traditional cloud computing. Edge computing processes data closer to the source, minimizing the latency we’ve come to expect with centralized locations, and allowing real-time responses.
This is especially important as we consider the expanding scope of ADAS and autonomous driving features. These features rely on immediate processing of the data detected from sensors. Edge computing prevents a delay between the detection of a pedestrian and the vehicle making the appropriate response.
More broadly, we expect that edge computing will become an increasingly important part of IT architecture for carriers, MGA, and retail agencies. Customers and employees expect immediacy and personalization, and edge computing can help to satisfy this demand. Agentic AI will become a commodity capability over the coming years to autonomously and immediately make decisions and take actions without the need for human intervention.
Agility matters for both hardware and software
The insurance industry has been operating in the software era for a long time, with hardware as a behind-the-scenes commodity. Now, several factors are bringing hardware into the spotlight again. AI is moving into the agentic phase, quantum computing presents new cybersecurity risks, IoT is spreading, and digital data is exploding.
At CES 2025, NVIDIA announced several products, including a personal AI supercomputer that enables LLMs to be created and run locally on the device. including models performing intricate tasks, understanding nuanced language, and generating more complex content. These advancements, coupled with the creation of modern data center capabilities to reverse some earlier cloud migrations, are key components of edge computing.
While quantum computing helps companies dramatically increase processing speed and capacity, it also introduces serious cybersecurity risks. Bad actors can harness the power of quantum to break traditional encryption, allowing for data breaches. Edge computing plays a role in protection, improving threat detection speed and reducing the amount of vulnerable data transmitted across a network.
Carriers, MGAs, and retail agencies will need new hardware and software to future-proof their cybersecurity and data privacy, along with product and service capabilities. If your organization habitually bases purchase and upgrade decisions solely on loan schedules and capitalization periods, you risk falling behind – and you put your security on the line.
The power of partnerships
“Partnership is the new leadership.”
This quote by Volvo Group President and CEO Martin Lundstedt at the company’s keynote address highlights a key but often overlooked business strategy: partnerships.
Companies should prioritize not only partnerships with third parties that add business value, but also with competitors. Both kinds of partnerships help to create a better industry environment for all stakeholders.
The showroom floors brought this vision to life with the countless AI, IoT, mobility, health tech, and other companies and products on display. Take vehicle tech, for example. Many vendors are offering new, innovative solutions that support OEMs in creating smarter and safer vehicles, including LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technologies and AI-enabled console entertainment systems.
However, given the number of vendors that exist across all industries, it is key to note that not all are created equal. While it is imperative for insurance companies to forge partnerships, due diligence will become necessary to ensure that standards are met, especially as new companies enter. For example, as water leak detection systems flood the market, insurers should carefully evaluate how much risk they prevent. Are these systems truly offering the risk mitigation needed to prevent serious claims, and thus qualify consumers for premium discounts?
Organizations need to assess current procurement processes to avoid a “less is more” vendor strategy focused on maximizing purchasing power. This can block tapping into an increasing array of best-of-breed solutions that, in combination, would better support a carrier, MGA, or retail agency’s strategy.
Future implications of products featured at CES 2025
CES showcased the growing landscape of products that represent opportunities for the insurance industry, from smart home solutions for risk management to agentic AI to automate actions and decisions. However, as the expression goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” That responsibility includes verifying that the technology is truly ready for prime time, both from a functionality and cybersecurity perspective.
The expanding use of technology in vehicles, homes, and businesses requires a focused examination of existing insurance products and pricing. New coverages may be needed, and different data will be necessary to accurately evaluate and price new business submissions and renewals.
