Is the payment now the insurance product? Zurich, One Inc, CFC, Testudo, McKinsey and Mercer Marsh Benefits at the Mastercard Insurance Innovation Forum 2026 in London

Why has a payments forum become an insurance forum?

The host opened by noting how far the forum has come. Three years ago there were about 40 people in the room. This year there were more than 100 at the start, and by the close Mastercard counted over 140 participants, 25 external speakers and 15 Mastercard colleagues. Sponsors thanked from the stage included Barclays, Worldpay, Checkout.com, Stripe and Paysure.

Mastercard’s global lead for card benefits and insurance services set the tone. People care more about experiences than products, he said, and insurance tied to a card is becoming more invisible but more important. He pictured a traveller whose delayed flight triggers lounge access and a pre-filled claim, without the cardholder having to remember which benefit sits on which card. The moment something goes wrong, he said, is where trust and loyalty are won.

What can insurers learn from 20 years of virtual cards in travel?

In the keynote, Andrea Caulfield-Smith of The Advantage Travel Partnership explained how travel has used virtual cards for more than two decades. A card created for one amount, one date and one supplier tied the payment to the booking. That made reconciliation easier and gave finance teams the data they had been missing. As she put it, the payment “became purposeful.”

She offered insurers three lessons. Treat payments as strategic infrastructure, not a cost-cutting exercise. Intermediaries get stronger when the systems around them get stronger. And precision changes everything, because a payment linked to a clear purpose is easier to govern and to trust.

“Scale doesn’t always come from consolidation; sometimes it comes from coordination.”

Andrea Caulfield-Smith, Managing Director, Global Business Travel, The Advantage Travel Partnership

Is embedded insurance really new?

Not at all, said Patrick Corbett of Zurich, who has spent 40 years in accident, health and travel insurance. Banks and card companies have offered travel cover at no additional cost for decades. What is new is digital delivery. Data from an airline or online travel booking now lets insurers offer cover that fits the trip, instead of one policy for everyone.

On claims, the best claim is the one the customer never has to make. Parametric flight-delay cover can pay out automatically, and AI agents are cutting settlement for more complex claims from days or weeks to hours or minutes.

“There’s no such thing as a bad risk, it’s just a bad price.”

Patrick Corbett, Zurich Cover-More

How do you make digital change stick in a large organisation?

Kate Brown, Global Digital Leader at Mercer Marsh Benefits, said it starts with the problem that matters to the customer. A new tool also has to make colleagues’ work easier, including the back office, or it will fail.

In her earlier work digitising Mercer’s US health advice, the platform alone was not enough. The change came from training people in person and from finding early adopters. Actuaries took to live data first, then sales teams, and everyone else followed. Her advice: “Find the groups within your organisations that are more naturally inclined to be innovative,” and lean into them. She also said a digital platform for smaller employers is now live in about 20 countries, bringing benefits once reserved for large firms within reach of a 20-person business.

What happens when AI agents start buying insurance?

Mastercard described a shift from AI that advises to AI that acts and pays. To make that safe, it has added a trust layer it calls verifiable intent: a cryptographic proof of who the agent is acting for, what authority it holds and the limits of that authority.

Mark Titmarsh of Testudo named two risks. When an agent buys something its owner did not intend, disputes follow, and insurance could step in, perhaps as a cardholder benefit. The bigger blind spot is real-world legal liability. He said the 18 largest US liability insurers have introduced more than a thousand AI exclusions, leaving many businesses self-insuring risks they may not know they hold.

Dan Keeler of CFC shared lessons from Lane Assist, its agentic underwriting pilot in cyber. It grew quickly from one underwriter to 30 and then 150, and the team learned it needed stronger guardrails and governance from the start. A human stays in the loop. The next step is to teach the agent CFC’s own back book, so it mirrors two decades of cyber underwriting before it evolves further.

“I don’t believe it is a tool. I believe we now need to see it as a persona that sort of works alongside us.”

Dan Keeler, Head of Digital Underwriting, CFC

After lunch, in Mastercard’s Experience Centre, a demo showed an AI agent buying travel insurance for a family trip, adding sports cover and paying with a tokenised card and a biometric check. Ian Slater of Mastercard kept expectations grounded: agent payments have only just started, and most are done as hobbies for now. That will scale, he said, but today the biggest AI investment is in network security, where he described an arms race with bad actors.

Why are insurers leaving premium on the table?

The acceptance panel was blunt. Stripe’s speaker said payments are still an afterthought at the end of large transformations, and many big insurers cannot name their authorisation rate. Beazley’s speaker said a failed payment often ends in a cancelled policy, and for a small business policy the cost of cancelling can outweigh the premium.

Alex Barton of Admiral Pioneer framed it as unit economics. Winning a customer is expensive, and a failed renewal can mean paying to win them all over again. Network tokens, which keep card details current when a card expires or is replaced, take much of that complexity away. Two simple asks came from the panel: make one person accountable for payments end to end, and ask your payment providers for the data.

Mastercard’s own view backed this up. Insurance card payments are declined more often than online payments overall, token use in insurance still trails other sectors, and Mastercard is working towards full tokenisation by 2030.

What does an unpredictable world mean for insurers?

Chien-Teng “CT” Chia of McKinsey said inflation is showing up in repair, construction and medical costs, so insurers need a sharper, more forward-looking view. Small weaknesses in the maths compound when uncertainty rises, which makes technical excellence in underwriting, pricing, reserving and claims critical. Value is shifting to focused specialists and to those who own customer access. Her advice: AI is now table stakes, so decide what to build in house, what to partner on, and how your operating model must change.

Ian Slater drew on banking. The winners there got the digital customer experience right, and big banks that treated fintechs as the enemy fell behind. He hoped insurers would embrace insurtechs instead.

“It’s much better done as a collaboration rather than a competition. There is enough in the industry for everybody.”

Ian Slater, Executive Vice President, Mastercard

How fast can a claim be paid?

Ian Drysdale of One Inc said payments are the number one touchpoint for policyholders. One Inc runs inbound and outbound payments for carriers from inside core systems such as Guidewire, and works with 15 of the top 20 US carriers. When one large insurer joined, it went from 15 per cent to 90 per cent digital payments in a day, because the vendor network was already signed up. Home claims that once took four to eight weeks to collect every signature on a cheque can now be paid the same day.

“The payment is the experience.”

Ian Drysdale, CEO, One Inc

Juliette Dusseaux of Eyst, speaking alongside Edenred Payment Solutions, showed virtual cards at work in assistance and property claims. Cards can be limited to certain merchant types or a single transaction, and sent to a phone wallet by text link with no app to download. Her tip: start with a simple dashboard, not a full integration. Wilm Kemper of YOUR PASS showed wallet passes that update in real time with policy details, renewals and claim status.

On the final panel, Edward Adams of Checkout.com said the leading claims experience will be built on choice: a card pushed to a wallet, a reimbursement or a pay-to-card transfer. Hodgen Mainda of Transcard, a former Tennessee insurance commissioner, said one carrier spent six years reaching internal alignment before it issued a request for proposals, then went live within a year once the CEO made it a priority. Barclays’ speaker said the goal now is proof of value, not another proof of concept, starting with business-to-business payments.

Where do medical tourism and testing fit in?

Jonathan Edelheit of the Medical Tourism Association said patients travelling for care is a large and fragmented market, with hospitals often decades behind on technology and payments. He described Better, a platform built with Mastercard to bring patients, insurers, employers and hospitals into one place, with trust as the biggest barrier to solve.

Rupert Naylor of Mastercard closed the learning sessions with a challenge. Insurers have more data and tools than ever, yet he said 93 per cent of senior executives in a Mastercard survey found decisions harder than five years ago. His answer is business experimentation: test against a control group, then roll out only what works, and for whom.

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