The insurance industry continues to be a hotbed of innovation, with activity driven by growing demand for digitalisation and personalisation. With growing importance of technologies such as telematics, machine learning, big data, deep learning, and data science, insurers are overcoming demographic challenges, low penetration rates, cybercrimes and fraudulent claims. In the last three years alone, there have been over 11,000 patents filed and granted in the insurance industry, according to GlobalData's report on Artificial intelligence in Insurance: AI-assisted underwriting. However, not all innovations are equal and nor do they follow a constant upward trend. Instead, their evolution takes the form of an S-shaped curve that reflects their typical lifecycle from early emergence to accelerating adoption, before finally stabilising and reaching maturity. Identifying where a particular innovation is on this journey, especially those that are in the emerging and accelerating stages, is essential for understanding their current level of adoption and the likely future trajectory and impact they will have.

Chinese companies have surged ahead of their U.S. counterparts on a Nikkei ranking of the top 50 patent filers for artificial intelligence over the past three years, expanding their presence in the world's most prominent high-tech battleground. In the three years between 2016 and 2018, China more than doubled the amount of companies in the top 50 to 19 - up from eight in the previous three-year span. Meanwhile, the U.S. kept a tight grip on the top three spots, but only had 12 companies in the top 50 - down from 19 in the previous ranking. The rankings come after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the American AI Initiative last month, a plan to increase research and development in the sector but lacked any specific funding to towards that aim. IBM led the way for the U.S. with 3,000 applications.