At a time when premium growth has surged on the back of inflation and repricing, the insurance industry is confronting an uncomfortable truth: the protection gap is not shrinking. In many cases, it is widening.
But according to industry leaders speaking at Insurtech Insights Europe 2026 this week, affordability may not be the core issue. Instead, misunderstanding and a lack of customer education could be the bigger barrier to closing the gap.
“The protection gap has almost increased further, or at least stayed flat,” said David Sütterle, group chief digital and transformation officer at global re/insurance firm SCOR. “We need to think beyond repricing and focus on how we insure risks that are currently uninsurable.”
While pricing remains a factor, panellists agreed that a significant portion of unmet protection demand stems from confusion around coverage.
Cara Morton, CEO of global businesses and operations at Zurich Insurance, highlighted everyday examples where gaps emerge not from cost, but from lack of clarity.
“Sometimes the protection gap is not about affordability, it’s about not understanding,” Morton told an audience of insurance professionals at the InterContinental O2 in London. “Even simple things like travel insurance… people don’t understand when business travel insurance stops, and leisure travel insurance kicks in.”
The panellists agreed that education is a critical and underutilized driver of growth. Rather than viewing the protection gap purely as a product or pricing problem, insurers and intermediaries may need to reframe it as a communication challenge.
Morton argued that expanding the “pie” of insurance demand will depend on combining traditional coverage with education and prevention services. Zurich’s recent acquisition of cyber protection firm BOXX reflects this shift, with the company focusing on preventing losses before they occur.
“Prevention is really key,” Morton said. “If we can stop 95% of incidents before a claim is made, that changes the value proposition entirely.”
Alongside the protection gap debate, speakers explored how insurers are rethinking operating models to support growth. A central tension lies in balancing global scale with local relevance.
Morton described Zurich’s “country-first” model, which prioritizes local market fit while leveraging global capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence and operations. “The scale challenge is what to run globally and what to run locally,” she said. “Global operations give you resilience, diversification, and access to different ideas… but you still need to be relevant to customers in each market.”
This balance proved particularly valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic, Morton explained, when global insurers were able to reroute operations and maintain continuity. It also enables knowledge transfer, allowing smaller markets to benefit from innovations developed elsewhere.
For reinsurers, scale takes on a different meaning. Sütterle emphasized diversification rather than size as the defining factor. “Scale is about pooling risks globally to ensure affordability, liquidity, and capital where needed,” he said. “It’s not just about being big, it’s about being diversified.”
As global risks become more complex and systemic, both Morton and Sütterle stressed the importance of collaboration.
“Collaboration is only going to become more and more important, because the challenges we’re facing are becoming more and more significant,” Morton said. “We need to encourage people and invest more in education and prevention, because we really need to shift the way we approach these challenges.”
“Risks have always required systemic solutions. No single balance sheet can absorb these risks alone,” said Sütterle. “And if you look at developments like autonomous systems, the technology is there, but we don’t see it deployed everywhere yet. That’s because we still need infrastructure in place, regulation aligned across regions, and, importantly, trust from individuals.
“So, there’s a process here - education, testing, and learning - that needs to be part of how we approach systemic risk and innovation. Risk innovation helps us understand how to tackle these challenges and develop the right techniques together.”
