EUDI Wallet in the Insurance Industry — How Digital Identity Is Changing Policy Servicing, Claims Handling, and Customer Relationships

The EUDI Wallet — the European Digital Identity Wallet required under the eIDAS 2.0 regulation — is entering the insurance sector as infrastructure for the secure storage and sharing of identity data and other credentials. It has the potential to reshape how insurers verify customers, conclude contracts, run digital onboarding, handle claims, confirm entitlements, transfer insurance history, and collaborate with partners.

For managers and decision-makers in the insurance industry, this translates into concrete decisions: when to start planning integrations, which processes to optimize first, and how to position against competitors who are only just starting to look at eIDAS 2.0. The stakes are both operational and market-related: less friction in policy servicing, lower verification costs, better fraud protection, and a higher-quality customer experience in a world where digital service is becoming the standard.

What is the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet) in the context of eIDAS 2.0, and why insurance is one of the first sectors with a real business case

The EUDI Wallet — the European Digital Identity Wallet — is a standard required by the eIDAS 2.0 regulation. It is part of the European Union’s digital identity framework, and eIDAS 2.0 itself entered into force on 24 December 2024. Every EU member state is required to provide wallet access to the 500 million citizens of EU member states by 2026. The wallet stores not only proof of identity but also attributes: credentials issued by institutions (driving licenses, diplomas, professional qualifications, identification numbers), and — crucially for insurers — credentials issued by private entities operating within the trust ecosystem. The insurance industry is exceptionally well positioned within this ecosystem, since insurers already play the role of an entity that verifies identity, assesses risk, issues a document confirming coverage, and takes part in handling events that require identifying the parties involved.

Digital onboarding and concluding insurance contracts using digital identification

Taking out a policy online currently requires several steps from the customer: filling in a form, uploading scanned documents, waiting for verification, and often a branch visit or a call with an agent. Each of these steps generates operational costs and is a point at which the customer may abandon the purchase — including at the stage of using digital services.

The EUDI Wallet reduces this process to a few gestures. The customer opens the wallet, selects the data they want to share with the insurer, and authorizes the transfer, which makes everyday use of the solution easier. The insurer receives a verified digital identity along with secure data confirmation — not a scan, not a declaration, not a copy of a document, but a cryptographically signed attribute issued by a trust authority. Verification is instant, and the data requires no manual processing on the insurer’s side.

Concluding a contract requires a signature. The EUDI Wallet enables a qualified electronic signature to be applied directly from within the wallet without external tokens, without mailing documents, without a branch visit. The policy is signed, legally valid, and immediately available in digital form. The same mechanism supports logging in to public and private services, and other services across the European Union.

An additional effect appears when extending coverage or purchasing further products. If a customer has already taken out motor insurance and wants to add travel insurance, their data is already verified within the ecosystem. Re-verification becomes a formality or isn’t needed at all.

Policy as an attribute in the wallet — real-time entitlement verification

One of the most practical use cases for the EUDI Wallet in insurance is the policy as a verifiable credential — a credential issued by the insurer, stored in the customer’s wallet, and verifiable by any party within the trust ecosystem. The European wallet can also store other types of credentials, including PID, QEAA, PuB-EAA, and EAA.

In health insurance, this means a customer visiting a medical facility doesn’t need to show a card, log into the insurer’s app, or call a helpline. The facility verifies the credential directly from the wallet in real time, without intermediaries. The selective disclosure mechanism allows only the data needed to confirm entitlements to be shared: whether the policy is active, what the scope of coverage is, and until when it’s valid — strengthening privacy protection and security, since users share only the information that’s necessary. No additional personal data.

In motor insurance, a third-party liability or comprehensive policy becomes an attribute the driver can share at any moment with the other party after a collision, with emergency services, with an assessor. Sharing happens wallet-to-wallet or via QR verification, without needing to carry a paper policy or remember whether the PDF on the phone is up to date. The data is always current, because the credential comes directly from the insurer.

In travel insurance, a credential can be verified by a foreign medical facility, hotel, airport, or border service without document translation and without a language barrier — this is about using solutions available across Europe, since the EUDI standard works across EU national borders.

Claims handling — less paperwork, less fraud, faster payout

Claims handling is one of the areas with the highest operational cost in insurance — and at the same time the moment when the customer judges the insurer most critically. The EUDI Wallet addresses both problems.

When filing a claim, the customer can attach verified data directly from the wallet: identity, policy number, driving license, vehicle data, proof of residence. In the user’s wallet, the customer keeps user control over what user shares, so only the necessary claim data is disclosed and shared access can be revoked at any time where ongoing access exists. The data reaches the insurer’s system without manual re-entry, without risk of error, and without the need for re-verification by an employee. The process can also be supplemented with biometric identity verification based on facial recognition technology. Handling time is shortened, and the customer can be confident the claim was submitted with complete, verified information.

On the insurer’s side, there’s a significant benefit in fraud prevention. Verifiable credentials are cryptographically signed by the issuer — forging them is technically far harder than faking a scanned document or manipulating a PDF file, which helps reduce forgery risks for identity documents and lowers exposure to identity theft. This approach also supports security and cybersecurity requirements throughout the claims process, while strengthening privacy through data minimization. In an industry where losses from insurance fraud are counted in billions of euros annually across Europe, this is an argument that translates directly into financial results.

Life and health insurance — data continuity and portability of history

In life and health insurance, customers accumulate documentation over the years: policies, medical certificates, test results, correspondence with the insurer. Switching insurers today means gathering and submitting large amounts of paper or scattered digital documentation.

The EUDI Wallet opens up the possibility of transferring insurance history as a set of credentials issued by the previous insurer, verified, and ready to hand over to a new one. The new insurer doesn’t need to run its own verification from scratch, and the customer doesn’t need to collect certificates.

In the future, if regulations and patient consent allow, the wallet could store health attributes: information about chronic conditions, vaccination history, current prescriptions. For health and life insurers, this is a data source that could automate risk assessment and offer personalization while the customer retains full control over what they share.

Additional applications: where the EUDI Wallet might surprise you

Beyond the obvious use cases, there are applications that may be less intuitive but carry real operational potential:

Verifying insurance intermediaries and agents. An insurance intermediary’s license as an attribute in the agent’s wallet — verifiable by the insurer, the regulator, and the customer in real time. No more manually checking regulatory registers.

Onboarding fleet employees. In fleet insurance, every new driver at a company must undergo verification. The EUDI Wallet allows instant confirmation of identity, driving license validity, and insurance history without involving HR and the insurer in exchanging paper documentation.

Parametric insurance. Parametric insurance (e.g., for flight delays or adverse weather conditions in agriculture) requires fast identification of the beneficiary and payout without a traditional claims process. The EUDI Wallet as a channel for identification and payout authorization shortens this process to a minimum.

Embedded insurance. In this model, insurance is offered at the point of sale of another product (buying electronics, an airline ticket, renting a car), which requires instant customer onboarding. The wallet removes the barrier to entry — the customer authorizes data sharing with a single gesture, without forms.

Operational benefits for insurers — what changes in the numbers

Shorter onboarding time translates into a higher conversion rate and less customer drop-off at the point of purchase. Automated data verification eliminates the cost of manual document processing and reduces errors in systems. Verifiable credentials reduce the risk of fraud both when contracts are concluded and when claims are handled. AML/KYC compliance is documented in an auditable way, and issuing digital credentials or accepting them from trusted parties can reduce repeated checks with no additional compliance workload.

The insurance industry operates on margins where optimizing operational costs by even a few percentage points has a direct impact on product profitability. The EUDI Wallet isn’t just another digital channel, but it’s infrastructure that can lower the unit cost of customer service across several processes at once.

Challenges and regulatory requirements worth knowing before planning an integration

None of the use cases described above will be available out of the box from day one of the wallet’s operation. A few things need attention.

Standardization of insurance-sector attributes within EUDI is still in progress. The first iterations of the wallet will cover identity documents and driving licenses — sector-specific attributes, including insurance ones, will be rolled out gradually. Their introduction will also mean rolling out further services and expanding functionality as sector standards mature. First deployments will also depend on the technical specifications set under the common reference framework and the broader EU framework. Implementing acts published by the European Commission define part of the rollout requirements for trust services under the digital identity regulation. Insurers who start planning their namespaces and data schemas now will be better positioned than those who wait for a finished standard.

Ecosystem readiness on the partner side — medical facilities, repair shops, emergency services, sales platforms, and wallet providers — will vary by country and sector. Implementing a wallet-to-wallet use case at the scene of a collision requires both parties to have wallets and the verifier to know how to handle them. The wallet itself is built on security-by-design principles, and data is processed and stored locally on the user’s device, which matters for ensuring privacy. National wallets and national eID schemes will need to interoperate for cross-border services, and future ecosystems may also include credentials such as the European Health Insurance Card. In Poland, EUDI solutions are being integrated with the mObywatel app as an extension of national systems rather than a replacement for them, making the services more broadly accessible.

Customer education is a separate challenge. The wallet represents new user behavior. The first months of adoption will require communication support from insurers who decide to introduce it. It’s important that users can take advantage of these features only after effective rollout and proper preparation of the services.

Summary

The EUDI Wallet is entering insurance through several doors at once: onboarding, entitlement management, claims handling, data portability, and new distribution models. For insurers who start planning integrations now, this means an operational advantage and a leadership position in the eyes of customers accustomed to digital service — as well as readiness to operate within the EUDI Wallet digital identity ecosystem as part of broader public and private services built on the European identity model. For those who wait, it means having to catch up in an ecosystem that will already be up and running.