Is AI Search Creating Insurance Monopolies in Australia? Somantra Data Says Yes But 70% of the Market Is Still Unclaimed

Research from Somantra finds that handful of brands dominate on AI-generated insurance answers, while majority of long tail queries return no brand name.

SYDNEY, NSW, AUSTRALIA, June 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Somantra, an AI Search brand monitoring platform, today released findings from its May 2026 AI Search Visibility Report showing that AI search engines are concentrating consumer attention around a small number of Australian insurance brands far more aggressively than traditional Google search ever did, while at the same time, the majority of specific, high-intent insurance questions are answered without naming any brand whatsoever.

The research tracked 20 Australian insurance brands across 34,278 real consumer conversations on Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT during May 2026.

# The Concentration
On ChatGPT, the report found that just three brands - Allianz, NRMA and AAMI - account for 50% of all insurance mentions. Five brands account for 60% of mentions, seven account for 75%, and nine account for 90%. For any brand outside that top tier, the platform leaves very little visibility to compete for.

Google AI Overviews was found to be comparatively more distributed, but not by a wide margin: four brands make up 50% of mentions, five reach 60%, eight reach 75%, and eleven cover 90% of all mentions. The longer tail on Google means more brands get a seat at the table but the structure is still one of concentration, not an open marketplace.

"Google gives you options. ChatGPT gives you a shortlist, and the shortlist is getting shorter," said Arun Prasad, Founder of Somantra. "If you are not already in the top tier on a given platform, you are fighting over scraps of visibility, not competing on equal terms."

The concentration extends below the brand level into individual product categories, where the report found single brands effectively own entire verticals: Allianz holds 3,941 of the mentions in travel insurance, NRMA leads car insurance with 3,238, QBE dominates motorcycle insurance with 2,896, and Budget Direct leads the smaller pet insurance category with 940. In several of these categories, the next-closest competitor trails by a significant margin, the kind of gap that is difficult to close once an AI engine has settled on a default answer.

# The whitespace: most of the market still has no brand in it

Despite this concentration among branded answers, the report found that the majority of real consumer queries are not being won by anyone. Across the detailed, long-tail questions consumers actually ask, such as how to claim pet insurance for an overseas trip, or which discounts apply when insuring a new car - 70% of AI-generated answers named no insurance brand at all.

The two dynamics are connected, not contradictory, according to Somantra. The same forces that let a handful of brands dominate the highest-volume, most generic queries leave the long tail of specific questions wide open, because AI engines have not yet settled on a default brand to recommend for them.

"This is not a problem. This is an opportunity," Prasad said. "Every one of those brandless responses is a gap in the market which is proof that the right content, structured the right way and published on the sources AI engines trust, could put a brand into that answer instead of nobody at all."

# Why platform disagreement widens the opening

The report also found that Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT agree on the leading recommended brand for the same query only 27.9% of the time, up slightly from 23.7% in March. Even on the small set of queries where both platforms do name a brand, they recommend different brands roughly seven times out of ten.

Somantra argues this divergence compounds the whitespace opportunity rather than closing it: a brand shut out of ChatGPT's shortlist may still have a real opening on Google, and vice versa, because the two platforms are independently forming their own view of which brands to trust.

"The dual combination of expanding opportunity surface area and divergence in brand recommendations between the AI search engines is the biggest opportunity for brands right now," Prasad said. "Large brands have spent a decade optimising for a single search engine. That playbook does not transfer to a world where two major platforms disagree most of the time, and where most of the specific questions consumers ask are not being answered by anyone."

# A closing window

Somantra's research frames the next phase of competition as a race against time. The pool of unique domains AI engines cite as trusted sources contracted 21% between March and May, from 10,777 to 8,488 , highlighting that the field of who gets cited, and therefore who gets recommended, is narrowing every reporting cycle.

"The window is closing," Arun said. "Every month, more of the long tail gets claimed by whichever brand shows up first with the right content on the right sources. Waiting for AI search to mature before acting just hands that ground to a competitor."

Somantra's full concentration and whitespace analysis, including brand-level mention share, product-category breakdowns, and the cross-platform agreement table, is available in the May 2026 report at somantra.ai.

To learn more visit https://somantra.ai

Arun Prasad
Somantra Pty Ltd
+61 2 8664 1023
arun@somantra.ai

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