Allianz’s €2.5bn Buyback and Anthropic Deal Come as Industry Report Sees Market Doubling to €12 Trillion

Allianz repurchases €92.5M in shares, partners with Anthropic for AI tools, and reports global insurance premiums grew 7.1% in 2025 to €6.9 trillion.

The global insurance industry is charting a decade of expansion, and Allianz is pushing on two levers at once – returning capital to shareholders and embedding artificial intelligence into its operations. A day after the insurer’s in-house research arm published a bullish long-term outlook, the company disclosed the latest tranche of its buyback programme and confirmed a partnership with AI firm Anthropic.

Between 20 and 22 May, Allianz repurchased 240,477 own shares at an average price of €384.69, spending €92.5 million. Since the buyback was launched on 13 March, the total number of shares bought has reached roughly 2.27 million, equating to €842.5 million of the €2.5 billion authorised envelope. The programme is set to run until the end of 2026, with all repurchased shares subsequently cancelled. The stock itself traded at €383.80 recently, marginally below the average cost of the latest purchases and about 3% shy of its 52-week high of €394.80.

On the technology front, Allianz has struck a global partnership with Anthropic, the US developer of the Claude family of large language models. The agreement grants all Allianz employees access to Claude-powered tools via the company’s internal AI platform, covering research, analysis and knowledge management. Software developers will additionally be able to use “Claude Code” for coding and debugging. Crucially, the two companies are jointly building audit trails that log every AI decision, including its rationale and the data sources used, and a “human-in-the-loop” guardrail ensures manual oversight for sensitive or complex cases – a regulatory necessity for a heavily supervised industry.

These operational moves unfold against the backdrop of the Global Insurance Report 2026, released by Allianz Research on Wednesday. The study puts worldwide premium volume at €6.9 trillion in 2025, a 7.1% increase from the prior year. While the growth rate has slowed from 2024’s exceptional pace, it still comfortably exceeds the ten-year average of 5.6%. The strongest engine was health insurance, which jumped 12.3% – the segment’s fastest expansion since 2014 – driven by ageing populations, rising healthcare costs and squeezed public systems. North America led the charge with 14.9% growth, with the US alone accounting for more than 70% of global health premiums.

Property and casualty insurance, by contrast, decelerated to 3.8%, with North America’s rate sliding from 9.7% to 2.2% as price cycles mature and claims inflation stabilises. Allianz chief economist Ludovic Subran highlighted geopolitical fragmentation as a structural stress test: resilience is replacing efficiency as the guiding principle, making cross-border models more expensive and eroding traditional diversification benefits. At the same time, demand for specialist cover in infrastructure, energy security and political risk is rising – niches where Allianz has long held a strong position.

Looking ahead, the report projects annual market growth of 5.3% over the next decade, which would double the global premium pool to roughly €12.1 trillion by 2036. Health insurance is expected to lead at 6.7% per year, followed by life (4.9%) and property/casualty (4.7%). Asia, led by China and India, is forecast to gain about five percentage points of global market share, while Western Europe’s relative weight declines. A structural headwind comes from climate change: insured natural catastrophe losses are rising by 5-7% annually in real terms, colliding with weakening household purchasing power.

Allianz’s own financial health provides the latitude for both the buyback and the AI investment. In the first quarter of 2026, the group posted an operating profit of €4.5 billion, up 6.6% year on year. Third-party assets under management hit a record €2.043 trillion, helped by net inflows of €45 billion. The full-year target of €17.4 billion in operating profit remains unchanged, and a Solvency II ratio of 221% underlines the capital buffer. The next set of quarterly numbers is due on 7 August, when investors will look for early signs of whether the Anthropic tie-up is already leaving a mark on costs.