Decisive and Suwr shift AI tools to Gulf insurance buyers amid pricing pressures and falling sector profits

Insurtech in the Gulf region is undergoing a structural shift in its business model, moving software focus from serving traditional insurers to empowering buyers and companies paying coverage premiums. After years of technical solutions concentrating on claims automation, fraud assessment, and policy administration for insurers, two funding rounds show value shifting toward the buy side. In Saudi Arabia, Decisive launched an AI insurance agent to support renewal negotiations and opened an eight million dollar growth round, while Bahrain based Suwr raised seed funding to operate a consumer facing comparison platform licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain.

This shift is underpinned by clear market financial data. In the Saudi market, gross written premiums rose 10.7 percent during 2025 to reach 84.3 billion Saudi riyals (about 22.6 billion dollars), while paid claims climbed 10 percent to reach 53 billion riyals, driven by the health and motor insurance segments, which accounted for nearly 89 percent of total growth and covered more than 14 million health beneficiaries and 11 million insured vehicles. Despite this revenue expansion, an analysis by Milliman of the insurance sector listed on the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul, showed a sharp drop in profitability, as net income after tax fell 40.8 percent to 2.2 billion riyals compared to about 3.7 billion riyals, the loss ratio deteriorated to 89.3 percent, and return on equity dropped to 7.8 percent, with the vast majority of the market concentrated among three major companies: Tawuniya, Bupa Arabia, and Al Rajhi Takaful.

Financial pressure on insurance companies is pushing them to tighten renewal terms, and this is where AI tools give corporate executives precise benchmark data to distinguish justified increases from opportunistic pricing.In this context, Decisive, founded by Mohammed Nabhan and Saed Khawaldeh in 2023, developed a platform that measures policy performance, tracks cost leakage, and provides market rate benchmarking across a managed portfolio exceeding two billion riyals for more than 600 enterprises, in collaboration with 18 insurers and brokers, with a target of processing ten billion riyals in premiums. The strength of this platform relies on an empirical benchmark database that allows buyers to negotiate based on figures before accepting price hikes.

On the regulatory front, the Saudi Insurance Authority, established in 2023 and operational since November of that year, is enforcing the parallel implementation of a risk based capital framework during 2026, set to become fully mandatory in early January 2027, pushing companies to reprice unprofitable programs or exit them. The authority report recorded a drop in the average solvency margin to 156.7 percent, the handling of more than 440,000 complaints, and the imposition of fines totaling 25 million riyals across 180 regulatory decisions. In Bahrain, Suwr, founded by Mahmood Dhaif and Qasim Al Baqqali in 2024 with backing from Spring Studios, applies a digital model that allows individuals to compare policies and purchase coverage through a unified application, leveraging swift licensing as a regional launchpad toward larger markets.

The importance of comparison tools is also evident in the UAE market, where informal messages circulated claiming health insurance premiums would rise between 18 and 25 percent in early 2026, claims that industry specialists dismissed. Toshita Chauhan of Policybazaar noted that no blanket increase of this scale exists, while Anas Mistreehi, chief executive of eSanad, estimated actual healthcare cost inflation at only 4 to 8 percent, with the mandatory basic plan remaining unchanged at 320 dirhams annually. This gap between rumored figures and real costs confirms that AI tools do not eliminate medical inflation, but give buyers the transparency needed to understand their true position in the cost equation.