The AI Process Gap: rebuild the process before you scale the AI

Banks and insurers are putting AI agents into credit, onboarding, claims and compliance work, much of which was designed around people and paper long before agents existed.

New research from Camunda, carried out by Sapio Research in July and August 2026, surveyed senior IT, operations and transformation leaders, and employees who use AI every day, at organisations with more than 1,000 staff in the US, UK, Germany and France.

In banking and financial services, 75% of respondents say process problems have caused AI initiatives to fail, at an average cost of $1.73 million per organisation. In insurance the figures are 65% and $1.40 million.

83% of banking respondents and 79% of insurance respondents expect their AI investment to fall short unless more is spent on process design, yet 36% and 38% still put 10% or less of their AI budget into process redesign and change management.

BP3, a Camunda Platinum Partner, argues for starting with a single high-value process and one number to move: baseline it, redesign it so that agents, business rules and people each do what they do best, then run it on Camunda with approvals and a full record of every decision.

BP3's COO David Brakoniecki speaks on this theme in The Great Re-Engineering at CxO Institute London on 4 November, at 11:10.

Source: Camunda, The AI Process Gap (banking and insurance editions), September 2026. Shared by BP3. Read the research: https://go.bp-3.com/processos-the-great-re-engineering