Competitive pressure is reshaping underwriting - Technology, in Graham’s view, is also being pulled forward by an increasingly aggressive competitive landscape among insurers. He noted that insurers performed strongly in 2025 from an underwriting perspective, but that competition and risk volatility are pushing them to understand risk far more deeply.

The old model was simple: Insure a building at a value and hope basic precautions are in place. The new model is data-rich: insurers want accurate risk information, better valuations, improved surveys, and stronger risk mitigation measures, both to price competitively and to manage exposure in a changing climate and macro environment.

This is where technology ecosystems and data integration become strategic, not optional. If insurers can onboard and quote faster, and understand risk better, they win. If they can’t, they will increasingly struggle to compete.

What gets in the way: Integration, context and legacy  - When I asked Graham what stops insurers and brokers from joining this ecosystem seamlessly, he pointed to a familiar culprit, legacy and complexity, especially in South Africa’s unique binder environment.

Broker businesses often sit with large, monolithic systems that were not designed for the realities of binder relationships and off-platform operations. The challenge is to make sure decisions made on-platform can be adhered to off-platform, including claims, pricing, and renewals. And insurers, meanwhile, want to maintain control of pricing logic and product rules even as distribution and servicing occurs across partner systems.

In other words, the technical work is hard, and it is expensive, but the cost of not doing it shows up everywhere else, in duplication, delays and operational risk.

The leadership mindset that makes it work –  One of the most valuable parts of our conversation was Graham’s description of the clients who adopt innovation more successfully.

He described “development partners”, businesses with less red tape and more entrepreneurial leadership, who want to operate at the tip of the spear. With these partners, Cardinal uses a sprint-based approach: test quickly, fail fast, ring-fence teams and trusted clients, and refine based on feedback. The objective is not to build massive, slow projects that only get tested a year later. It is to learn early and build what is actually needed.

He contrasted this with leaders who are “tech nouveau,” excited by demos and buzzwords, but not grounded in commercial reality, security requirements, data sensitivity, or the hidden cost of maintenance.

His warning was fair, “AI can look magical in a demo. In the real world, you must worry about sensitive information, POPIA risk, security, governance, and the ongoing maintenance burden of what you build”.

Don’t own the spear, stay at the tip of It  - Graham’s advice to brokers and insurers was pragmatic. If you are an insurance business rather than a technology business, your goal is to stay at the leading edge of innovation, but not necessarily to build everything yourself.

Internal builds can be expensive, risky, and fragile if knowledge is concentrated. The smarter approach is to work with best-of-breed partners, bring your insurance IP, and co-create, understanding that fast followers will copy most innovations quickly anyway. As he put it, “IP often has a short shelf life. The strategic advantage comes from being early, learning faster, and improving execution”.

The 2026 picture: A single pane of glass  - Graham ended with a vision that sits neatly inside the theme of “insurance built better”. The aim is to take the pain out of insurance administration for every party, insurer, broker, underwriter, service provider, claims handler, through an integrated technology ecosystem.

His phrase for it was ‘a single pane of glass’; one view where you can see what is happening across accounting systems, claims platforms, policy administration, service providers, and communications, and where every party can interact digitally without rekeying data or chasing updates.

For leaders planning 2026, the message is clear. AI matters. But the bigger win is integration. The industry’s next step is not more technology, it is technology that works together, removes duplication, and frees people to do the work only humans can do: Advise, judge, build relationships, and manage risk.