"We increased our policy count by 100% for the first quarter this year in comparison to last year."

Cassie Paul loves underwriting. You can tell from the infectious smile that lights up her face every time she talks about it.

“Insurance is so unique and I don't think a lot of people choose the insurance industry. It kind of chooses you. I kind of stumbled into underwriting and once I stumbled into it, I fell in love with it.”

After joining Paragon in early 2023 - following time with Amtrust, JM Wilson, and State Farm - she was quickly elevated to her current role as Head of E&S Casualty for Primary & Supported Excess. Even with a longstanding reputation among brokers, underwriters, and reinsurers, she made an immediate impression within Paragon’s walls. 

“Cassie’s impact has been monumental,” says Duffy Koller, President of E&S at Paragon. “Her technical expertise in underwriting, coupled with her ability to maintain solid rates and retentions provides us with increased support and capabilities in the market.”

Part of Cassie’s recipe for success is embracing cutting-edge technology like Kalepa’s Copilot to drive real impact to Paragon’s top and bottom lines. She and her team have been avid users of the platform since Paragon first deployed Copilot in early 2023.

“It’s truly an underwriter’s dream.”‍

An End-to-End Underwriting Copilot

Cassie highlights that Copilot helps her and her team across the board - improving risk selection, growth, and efficiency. “It’s a total game changer.”

Copilot starts by automatically ingesting all of the submissions documents and emails before supplementing them with third party data. “When the submission comes in to Copilot, it extracts all of it and organizes it in one space for you. So it makes the decision making quicker and faster, and it saves a lot of time.”

With digitized footprints of every risk, Copilot’s AI engine can identify the submissions most likely to bind profitably. Within minutes of receipt, every submission is assigned a Copilot risk score based on an insurer’s preference criteria, portfolio objectives, and historical quote and bind activity. “I can go into Copilot and find submissions that I want to work on specifically, and I'm not trying to sort through 1200 submissions. You know exactly what you want to work on.”

Copilot’s in-depth risk analysis then spots the hidden exposures underwriters care about and highlights suggested controls so they can take the appropriate action. Each Copilot report is tailored to the specific class and coverage, raising all of the relevant highlights to the underwriter’s attention with complete transparency to dive deeper. This allows underwriters like Cassie to make better risk decisions.

“I had one where I was getting ready to quote the account. It was loss-free, squeaky clean. And when I looked at my copilot report, there were multiple articles associated with this restaurant. However, there were no losses.

"I'm like, what is this?

“So I start reading through. The owner of the restaurant - there were multiple lawsuits against him for harassment to the workers. And with that, I told the broker, ‘if we were to consider this, we have to exclude A&B assault, A&M abuse and molestation.’ And the broker was like, ‘Oh my gosh, thanks for letting me know.’”

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Copilot delivers real, immediate impact

By focusing on the right submissions, declining the out-of-appetite risks immediately, and having in-depth risk analysis at her fingertips, Copilot has taken Cassie’s throughput to a whole new level. “It makes the day so much more efficient. You work faster, you work smarter, you can make decisions quicker. And if you do that, it gives you an advantage.”

As a result, Copilot has allowed Cassie to build even better broker relationships, leading to more bound business. “We can decline within a couple minutes or we can approve something within a couple minutes. And the speed of that for us to kind of get back to the broker - they send something in, they get a direct response right away.”

Paragon’s E&S Casualty program is only a few years old, so rapid growth has been a key focus for Cassie and her team. Copilot has been a big part of that. “It has increased our production tremendously,” she says. “We increased our quote count by more than 100% year over year. We increased our policy count by 100% for the first quarter this year in comparison to last year. And I do believe that copilot has a direct impact on that.” 

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“I use it every single day”

To sum it all up, Cassie put the benefits of Copilot very simply:

“We can be efficient and quote more business, we get to the right business that we want to quote, and we make sure that we're getting back to our brokers in a timely fashion so we can bind new business.”

“I don't know if I could function doing daily underwriting without having it.”

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To learn why Paragon CEO Ron Ganiats believes Copilot helps them "drive unparalleled excellence and efficiency," check out this writeup about Paragon's expansion of Copilot to support workers' comp, auto dealers, contractors & small construction, and specialty property.