As the insurance industry grapples with economic volatility, shifting market signals and the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence, leaders are being forced to make decisions faster and with less certainty than in the past.
That is one of the themes Anushree Prakash (pictured), vice president, operations at Definity, expects to explore in an upcoming Women in Insurance Summit Canada panel focused on economics, risk and business realities.
For Prakash, the starting point is straightforward: the industry is operating in an environment where long-range confidence is harder to come by, and adaptability matters more than ever.
“We are obviously in a quite turbulent, interesting and uncertain time,” she said. “What I want people to take away from our panel is an understanding of what we’re observing today, and based on that, where we think things might go – but obviously with the acknowledgement that none of us at this point have full confidence in predicting where things might go.”
That uncertainty is being shaped by multiple forces at once, she said, including a shifting global economy, the trade disruptions and the rapid emergence of AI. Together, those forces are creating a business climate in which leaders can no longer rely on the slower, more linear planning models that may have worked in the past. For insurers, that means balancing discipline with flexibility and making decisions in an environment where assumptions may need to be revisited quickly and often.
Instead, Prakash said insurers need to stay close to what is happening in the market and be prepared to respond iteratively as things evolve.
“The luxury of where analysis took six months, or a year, just doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. “We have to be very vigilant, we have to be responsive, and we also have to be willing to take calculated risks, because we will just not have complete information.”
That need for speed does not mean leaders are operating without support. If anything, Prakash said, new tools are allowing organizations to process change faster than before, creating opportunities alongside the uncertainty. In that sense, the challenge is not only about reacting to disruption, but also about identifying where change can create competitive advantage.
“It’s not all scary bad news,” she said. “There’s a lot of tools for enablement that didn’t exist, I’d say, two years ago.”
Among the issues she is watching most closely heading into 2026 is artificial intelligence. Prakash described AI as both a business risk and a transformative force that is already reshaping marketing, operations, technology and customer expectations.
“We know it will change the workforce. We just don’t know how fast and how much, but we know that the change is coming,” she said. “We know it will change our technology. It is changing our technology as we speak. It also changes our ability to respond.”
She added that AI is not only changing how insurance organizations work internally, but also how consumers behave and what they expect from the companies they deal with. That, in turn, raises the stakes for insurers trying to remain relevant while managing disruption.
Attendees can expect a discussion grounded in that reality: not certainty, but informed judgment; not static forecasting, but constant reassessment. For leaders across insurance, the value may lie less in definitive answers than in a clearer understanding of how to think through risk when the ground is still moving.
Join the Women in Insurance Summit Canada 2026 on June 2 at Universal Eventspace in Vaughan, ON, to turn representation into leadership. Hear from industry leaders, build your network, and leave with practical strategies to advance women into decision‑making roles.
