Top 3 Things You Missed at Underwriting Innovation USA

A lot is happening in the underwriting space right now. New technologies are being deployed at a rapid pace, which is having a significant impact on the way insurers operate. From artificial intelligence (AI) to telematics to blockchain, there’s an abundance of new ideas and ways of thinking about risk management.

The Underwriting Innovation USA conference brought pioneers together in Chicago on November 9–10, 2022, providing an excellent opportunity for networking and learning more about exciting changes in the industry.

If you missed out on the event, here are the top three things you need to know:

Data: More available than ever before

Underwriters have access to more data than ever, and there is no sign of that trend slowing down. Between the increased penetration of sensors and connected devices, the improvements to geospatial imagery data, and better aggregation of online information, the amount of data captured for insurers is far greater than it was just a few years ago. This is leading to a new wave of innovation and new types of data-driven products, as well as opening up opportunities for third-party data analytics providers to play an important role. Insurers will need to ensure that they have the necessary infrastructure in place to ingest and handle this data, as well as the resources and tools to be able to make the most of it. If not, they risk being left behind.

However, one of the biggest challenges with expanded data availability is overloading underwriters with information. Data exhaust is becoming a bigger pain point for carriers, who are bombarded with information they can’t make sense of. Raw data is often unusable by underwriters, and insurers lamented using their overtaxed IT departments just to display another data feed. That’s where the next takeaway comes in.

Insights: Turn data into knowledge

The first step in making data useful for risk reduction is consolidating it into concrete insights. For example, let’s take a casualty insurer who now has access to a database of extracted hotel reviews. Underwriters get none of the benefit unless it’s easy to determine if any of the locations have a bedbug infestation. Having this insight easily available saves underwriters crucial time and delivers answers that move the underwriting process along. At the conference, thought leaders from carriers and insurtechs discussed the importance of “getting underwriters back to underwriting” and how various technologies make that insight extraction process painless.

It’s important to note that the insight has to be understandable. While past solutions involved complex rules or regurgitated statistics jargon (think “This result is 1.72 standard deviations above the mean for this category”), new AI-powered solutions are giving underwriters exactly what they need to know, in human terms.

But insights are most valuable under one condition — when they lead to action.

Action: Putting insights to work

The entire underwriting process should be optimized for underwriters to quickly take action and make the right decision. Underwriters face many obstacles today, including disjointed, disconnected systems that spread insights across different screens for the same risk. Carriers are increasingly solving this with platforms that centralize insights and provide targeted guidance to the underwriter. That means advising underwriting decisions (“Which submission do I prioritize? Is this in appetite? How should I quote this?”) and making it easy to take the next action.

Insurers we spoke to at the conference are increasingly using AI to inform actions and make decisions. But training these models internally is time-consuming, expensive, and often yields disappointing results. With the continued growth of the insurtech industry, carriers are now relying largely on AI-driven partners to provide their underwriters with actionable insights.

How can Kalepa help?

Our Copilot underwriting workbench specializes in data-driven actionable insights, so we’ve seen the evolution of these three points firsthand. We know the challenges that underwriters face and how AI-powered insights can lead them to better decisions. Our goal is to make commercial underwriting better, faster, and more delightful for everyone involved.

If you’re interested in learning more about innovative underwriting, we’d love to talk to you. Schedule a demo or email us at info@kalepa.com to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

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