London, 3 November 2026.
Subcontext, the agentic insurance business, today revealed the results of its first AI Ready Index for UK protection businesses. The audit documents the results of sending AI assistants, with a real identity, a phone number and a payment card, to buy life insurance from every insurer, broker and partnership brand in the UK that sells protection online.
The AI assistants visited 110 protection websites and found a mixed welcome: 12 websites had a real time quote and purchase journey good enough for an AI assistant to get through. 85 well known protection websites have done no AI planning at all, and 3 of those block AI assistants outright.
“Consumers increasingly want to use AI assistants like Grok and ChatGPT to save them time but the majority of protection websites are not ready,” said Alain Desmier, co-founder of Subcontext. “Most of the insurance businesses our AI assistants visited have not even configured an agents.txt file that tells an AI assistant where to look.”
The research follows news from the US, where Meta launched its AI assistant Muse in September; millions of US users signed up within weeks and began using it as a personal shopper. Insurify, which has served more than 330 million insurance quotes, initially blocked Muse from its marketplace, then on 28 October opened an AI Agent Gateway so that Muse, OpenAI's Dots and others can quote from its carriers under its rules. The Subcontext AI Ready Index placed every UK protection website in one of three groups, graded on what the AI assistant could do:
Accidental AI sellers. 12 websites gave the AI assistant a price through their standard customer quote journey, with no apparent recognition that it was an AI. Those quotes came from just five insurers.
Taking first steps into AI. 13 more websites have written something for an AI assistant, an llms.txt page or AI agents named in robots.txt. Someone has thought about AI but not given it a route to buy.
Have not considered AI. 85 websites have nothing at all for AI. The AI assistant got in and found nothing, or in 3 cases was blocked from getting in.
Alain Desmier continued, “Our index is not about naming and shaming protection businesses. Rather, we want to sound the alarm that AI assistant shopping is coming and UK protection is not ready. When Muse reaches the UK, millions of people will download the app and start to use AI to shop for all sorts of things. This will be an incredible opportunity to engage the protection gap and we all need to be ready.”
The AI Ready Index ultimately shows that the AI adoption gap is smaller than it looks because AI assistants will find a way to fill in forms on consumer websites even when the journey has not been designed for them. However, with even a small amount of planning, UK protection websites can start positively interacting and preparing for AI assistants and the business their activity will lead to. The AI Ready Index will be run again every month and any protection website can request its detailed results from Subcontext, free of charge.
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About the research The AI Ready Index covers 110 UK firms that sell protection online: 47 insurers and mutuals, 44 brokers and distributors, and 19 aggregators and bank or retailer partnerships. Each site was visited by a disclosed AI assistant and recorded for bot walls, files written for AI assistants, chat and assistants, and any route to quote or buy. The AI assistants acted for one customer: £300,000 of decreasing term cover over 19 years for a 43 year old non smoker. Nothing was bought.
Every site was visited on 24 and 25 October 2026, purchase attempts were made on 26 October, and every site’s robots.txt, llms.txt and agents.txt was re-checked on 30 October. The index is published at www.subcontext.com/ai-ready and updated monthly. Campaign video: https://lnkd.in/p/eePPtJz2
About Subcontext Subcontext is an agentic insurance business focused on protection distribution. It builds the integrations that let insurers, brokers and partnerships sell to AI assistants. We believe AI will fundamentally change how life and health insurance is bought and sold, so we're rebuilding the customer journey around natural conversation, on the digital channels consumers want to use.