​How AI Is Changing The Economics Of Integration

Innovation​How AI Is Changing The Economics Of IntegrationByLuboslava Uram,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)May 21, 2026, 07:45am EDTLuboslava Uram is COO and CTO at Solvd Group, a subsidiary of Allianz Group. Transforming the claim management experience. getty​For years, integration has been one of the most expensive and time-consuming parts of any transformation. Whether it was driven by mergers, platform rollouts or system replacements, integration has often dominated budgets and timelines.Having led global technology and operational transformation programs across multicountry environments, I have seen integration repeatedly become the single largest source of delay, cost escalation and organizational friction. In many programs I oversaw, the challenge was not the business vision or even the technology itself. It was the complexity of aligning legacy systems, local market processes, fragmented data structures and independently evolving platforms.Many leadership teams still plan as if this level of integration effort is unavoidable. Integration is assumed to require years of synchronization before organizations can realize value. That assumption is increasingly outdated.AI is not removing the need for integration. It is changing where cost, effort and time are concentrated—and how organizations can approach integration more pragmatically.In working with my company's AI platform, I've learned that in global claims environments, insurers often operate across multiple legacy systems, local workflows, repair networks and fragmented data structures, making traditional integration slow and expensive.Instead of relying only on rigid point-to-point integrations, AI can help interpret incoming documents, normalize data, connect operational events and adapt to local process variations dynamically. In lev...