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InsurTech Mary Kotch, Executive Vice President & CIO, Validus Reinsurance
A Practical Approach to Innovation Mark L. Berthiaume, EVP, Chief Information Officer & Chief Technology Innovation Officer, The Hanover Insurance Group
Accelerated underwriting enables the insurers to streamline the policy issuance process with the aid of modern technologies.
FREMONT, CA: Underwriting is considered as one of the most challenging functionalities across the insurance realm. Conventionally, insurance underwriters were manually using multiple data sources to drive underwriting’s efficacy. However, the rapid growth of data coupled with increased compliance overheads has made the process of insurance underwriting painfully slow. Accelerated underwriting provides an alternative to the traditional underwriting process.
Although accelerated underwriting has stayed for quite some time now, the inclusion of automation is assisting the insurers by speeding and streamlining policy issuance for low-risk and simple cases. For instance, accelerated underwriting allows qualified applicants to buy a regular term life insurance policy that doesn’t need paramedics to visit the applicant’s house for checkups. In such a case, a review would need the involvement of paramedics without automation. However, automation will considerably boost the processing speed and accomplish it in a matter of minutes.
The advancements of technology, like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), are also propelling underwriting. Such technologies assist the underwriters to input data, in real-time, extracting any other information that is needed. Such capabilities will enable the underwriters to provide insurance coverage much faster while taking care of the business prospects as well. The adoption of predictive analytics, along with automation, can further add to the efficiency of accelerated underwriting. Predictive analytics imparts value to the risk selection process as well as allows the underwriters to understand the wide range of risks involved.
Another way predictive analytics can assist accelerated underwriting is via a top-down approach. It means underwriters and business managers can access a huge pool of analyzable data that they can use to answer questions as well as test ideas or hypotheses. Having such a capability can eliminate a lot of unnecessary trial-and-error requirements and can offer all levels of the business clarity of understanding, which is vital to long-term success.