The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has warned that a critical artificial intelligence (AI) fluency gap across insurance and personal finance could undermine responsible adoption if firms move faster than their people’s ability to understand, challenge and govern the technology.
The professional body brought together representatives from Chartered firms, technology, academia and other professional bodies in June, to explore what good AI governance should look like across insurance and personal finance sectors.
In Responsible AI: from policy to practice, the report summarising the discussion, the CII says boards, risk functions and customer-facing professionals need practical training that goes beyond basic tool use and supports critical thinking, professional scepticism and the confidence to question automated outputs.
The fluency gap, the report argues, is central to whether firms can adopt AI with clear purpose, professional judgement and public trust, rather than being driven by fear of being left behind, or a narrow focus on efficiency.
The report outlines what the responsible adoption of AI looks like, highlighting the importance of behaviours such as defining the problem AI is being used to solve before selecting or deploying the technology, and ensuring any tool is appropriate for the customer, business objective and risk involved. The report also warned against firms relying on “human in the loop” alone as a safeguard in itself, unless that human is active, informed and accountable.
Dr Matthew Connell, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the CII, said: “AI has the potential to improve how insurance and personal finance firms serve customers, but only if it is adopted with purpose, transparency and professional accountability at its core. There is a responsibility to use these tools in ways that strengthens trust, and does not dilute the human judgement and ethical standards that uphold our profession.”
The CII commits to supporting the development of practical AI policy frameworks, CPD, benchmarking, maturity models and live playbooks, while working with other professional and trade bodies on governance, procurement and standards.