MetLife's AI strategy in 2026 centers on group benefits: conversational enrollment, claims automation, and a 160-year data moat. Here's what the incumbent is shipping, where peers beat them, and what it means for life insurance AI.

Life insurance AI has shifted from a back-office experiment to the front door of the application itself. Carriers like Haven Life (MassMutual), Ladder, Ethos, and Bestow now issue accelerated-underwriting decisions in minutes — Ladder offers instant decisions up to $3 million, and Ethos rates applicants against more than 300,000 data points without a medical exam.