Texas plans an AI analysis from exam data and surveys

A memorandum from the Texas Commissioner of Insurance to the Governor commits the Texas Department of Insurance, TDI, to a “concise analysis” of property and casualty (P&C) insurers’ AI use in claims handling and underwriting, with TDI exam data and company surveys as its sources and the legislative session as its deadline. Among the steps the memo outlines, the analysis heads the ones listed as “Additional Administrative Actions,” which come after those listed as “Actions Directed by the Governor.”

This week’s story: the AI item Texas added to its own list

Commissioner Amanda Crawford dated the memorandum September 14, 2026 and addressed it to Governor Greg Abbott in answer to his directive. TDI’s copy is posted at a /reports/ web address, and the department’s 2026 news index still had no entry for it as of September 22.

Under the heading “Analysis of the use of AI in property and casualty (P&C) claims handling and underwriting,” the operative sentence reads: “Using data from TDI exams and company surveys, TDI will produce a concise analysis of P&C insurers’ use of AI prior to the legislative session.” The sentence before it says whose interest that serves: “policymakers and consumers have an interest in knowing how companies are currently using AI for claim handling and underwriting decisions.” The next regular session, the 90th, opens January 12, 2027, and the AI item itself carries no date.

Nothing in the item is addressed to a carrier. It names no survey form, no list of recipients and no filing; the only undertaking in it is the department’s own. The memo’s one “by the end of 2026” date belongs to a different item, a study of claim costs among the actions directed by the Governor, and does not attach to the AI analysis.

The item’s only mention of what companies are expected to do looks back to a “recently issued bulletin,” which the memo leaves unnumbered and which is B-0003-26 of June 12, and the wording that follows is the memo’s summary, not the bulletin’s text: “any use of AI in making a consequential decision for policyholders must include a human review of the decision.” Our report on the memo sets out what it commits TDI to and what it leaves open.

What to do this week

• Find what your company has told TDI’s examiners about AI in claims handling or in choosing which risks to write, and compare it with what those tools do today. If the two have drifted apart, that is better found in-house than in a survey answer, should TDI send one. Our guide to AI in insurance claims maps the handoffs worth looking at.

• Where a vendor, MGA or TPA runs the model that scores a claim or a risk, settle now whose staff would describe it if a TDI survey reaches your company, and whether they would describe it the way your exam record does.

• The NAIC’s model bulletin adoption map still lists a 2020 bulletin for Texas, one on insurers’ use of third-party data, not the June text the memo summarizes. If a compliance matrix you rely on takes its Texas row from that map, check that the row also names B-0003-26; our state tracker entry for Texas lists both.

On the Docket

• January 12, 2027: The 90th Texas Legislature’s regular session opens, and runs to May 31 on the Legislative Reference Library’s listing. The memo promises TDI’s AI analysis “prior to the legislative session,” which we read as this one. Texas P&C carriers, whose AI use in claims and underwriting is what the analysis covers. Texas Legislative Reference Library

• May 1, 2027: Executive Order N-9-26’s date for California’s Government Operations Agency to complete section 8898.1 of the Government Code, the application requirements, procedures and criteria for independent verification organizations, and post them. Insurers with outside testing of a pricing or claims model planned for 2027, which can now be timed against this posting. Executive Order N-9-26

• December 1, 2027: The order’s date for the same agency to complete section 11549.82(a), which includes setting up the AI Auditor Registry, and to begin the duties in 11549.82(b), which include issuing each registered auditor a number and publishing the numbers online. Insurers that bring in outside auditors for AI used in underwriting or claims, who may by then be able to look up a bidder’s number before signing. Executive Order N-9-26

This week in brief

Governance

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-9-26, signed September 18, gives the Government Operations Agency earlier deadlines, May 1 and December 1, 2027, for work that the auditor statutes in Issue 10 set for 2028 and 2029, and does not mention section 11549.82.5, whose ban on covered AI audits by anyone unregistered still starts January 1, 2029 under AB 1405. Its third item asks for recommendations by November 16 on amending the state’s AI safety and security laws, including for large frontier developers. Executive Order N-9-26

New Jersey Assembly Bill 5494, introduced September 14, would bar an insurer from using AI “to make the final decision to deny a claim filed under an automobile, homeowners, or flood insurance policy,” with a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, and does not define “final decision.” Our report reads the bill’s three-part definition of AI against how claims models work. A5494 as introduced

Business Lines

Connecticut’s Comptroller, the office that runs the State Employee Health Plan and Partnership Plan, not the state’s insurance regulator, announced on September 16 a five-pillar AI policy for those plans, including that no adverse determination “may be made solely by an AI system” and that carriers “must disclose governance and audit procedures to the Comptroller.” Our account of the five pillars lists the four administrators CT Mirror reports agreed to them. Comptroller’s announcement

From the Guides

Texas, in full. Our guide to how Texas regulates insurer AI sets B-0003-26 beside the NAIC model bulletin and works through what a Texas examination can cover: Texas Regulates Insurer AI Without Requiring a Single New Document.

Reply to the email this issue arrived in with any AI tool in your Texas claims or underwriting work that an examiner has not yet asked about; a description of what it does is enough, with product and company names left out.

– The Editor, InsureAI Wire