Resources
Blog
March 28, 2023
xx min read

Understaffing in Underwriting: Convr as a Cure

Overworked and understaffed is the makeup of many insurance teams in 2023. Convr’s recent survey results reveal tech could be key in making ends meet at work.

Overworked and understaffed looks to be the life for some insurance underwriting teams, at least in the near-term. In a recent survey commissioned by Convr®, some 64% of commercial property and casualty (P&C) insurance managers and above indicated that their underwriting team is probably or definitely understaffed. And 49% of those polled believe that their underwriting team is probably more understaffed than other teams within their company.

That’s according to the results of Convr’s Insurance Talent and Tech Trends Survey. The study, conducted by an independent firm, sampled a statistically significant sample of insurance underwriting leaders, and confirmed the consensus among commercial P&C insurance leaders is that understaffing is negatively impacting their bottom line.

\n

In fact, nearly half of those polled—some 48% of underwriting leaders went on the record saying understaffing is negatively affecting their expense ratio. And nearly 44% of P&C executives also indicated that with some frequency, understaffing has caused inaccurate information to inform their quotes.

In an industry so heavily reliant on order and accuracy to best manage risk, knowing that understaffing is contributing to mistakes and lost revenue is a tough pill to swallow. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook some 8,400 openings for insurance underwriters are projected each year over the decade. But net-net, not much optimism surrounds hiring for underwriting teams as only 39% of underwriting leaders are highly confident they’ll hit their hiring quotas in 2023. All whilst employment for underwriters is expected to decline four percent now through 2031. The writing is on the wall.

Convr’s survey also found the two most likely reasons P&C insurance managers and above suspect are the cause of understaffing on underwriting teams are that other industries are more appealing to younger candidates and there are few remote work opportunities offered. Underwriters are a dying breed.

\n

But appealing to the younger generation should be key to the insurance industry’s talent strategy. Millennials and Generation Z (zoomers) will soon comprise the majority of the workforce, so it’s imperative to engage with prospective talent as early as possible.

\n

So while hundreds of openings for insurance underwriter roles are listed on job boards such as indeed.com and insurancejobs.com, it’s unclear how many are actually being filled with qualified underwriting talent. Nearly 60% of P&C managers and above surveyed indicate that their underwriting team is struggling to hire quality candidates more than other teams at their company.

And the customer experience is suffering for it, too. More than 60% of respondents believe understaffing probably has a negative effect on P&C customer experience. So with their hands tied with less qualified talent and the restrictions on remote or hybrid work, what options are left for underwriting team managers?

It turns out, innovative technology solutions could be key. Through platforms such as the Convr Command Center, underwriting teams can improve their end-to-end processes and realize more efficient ways to cross the bridge from submission to quote.

Leveraging data-driven insights from tools such as Convr’s d3 Risk 360 for example, the tool empowers underwriters to see a full 360-degree view of an applicant to more accurately assess submissions and reduce the number of human touches along the way.

\n

All in all, Convr's Underwriting Command Center platform creates a more streamlined underwriting process that:

\n


1) Drives efficiency
2) Better informs the underwriter
3) Lowers operating costs
4) Improves the customer experience

What more could a provider want? It’s no secret that the underwriting market and talent pool is changing at a rapid pace. Technological advances are moving the space forward and team leaders are recognizing the need for tools such as Convr’s underwriting platform to avoid being left behind in a previously manual and cumbersome space.

\n

It’s time to work smarter and gain the competitive edge needed to break apart from the pack. As technology continues to transform the insurance industry, you can lead the revolution in your organization by getting to know Convr’s capabilities.

Convr’s modularized, AI-infused commercial underwriting platform turbo-charges underwriting without any added manpower—bringing you bottom line savings in as little as 6-8 weeks. To schedule a free demo, contact Suzanne Vranicar at suzanne.vranicar@convr.com.

blogs

Keep Reading

More articles on AI, underwriting and the future of commercial P&C.

XX MIN READ

Convr Accelerates MGA Growth

From Intake automation efficiency to data modeling for hidden insights, Convr is helping Managing General Agents (MGAs) turn fragmented submission documents into structured, enriched data – accelerating clearance, rating, and quote times to unleash profitable growth.

Everyone knows the best models win at taming documents!\nOur Intake module ingests and enriches data from both structured and unstructured documents including PDFs, Excel and emails across commercial property and casualty (P&C) insurance asset types, including ACORDs, Inspection Forms, SOVs, Loss Runs, Schedules, and more.

Powered by Convr AI and the Risk Context Engine – a purpose-built commercial insurance ontology, knowledge graph, and semantic layer that powers a multi-line schema – transforming fragmented submissions into structured, decision-ready intelligence. By grounding every document, application and data source into a consistent schema, Convr Intake ensures contextually complete, consistent, and reliable data from the start. The result is faster processing, fewer manual touchpoints, and improved risk clarity for accelerated MGA Growth.

Through Risk 360 – a commercial insurance data lake comprised of the digital footprints of millions of businesses – Convr standardizes addresses, performs geo-coding, enriches submissions with CAT modeling codes, and adds property intelligence data such as distance to coast and other hazard indicators. The enrichment delivers a holistic decision-ready view of risk prepared for underwriting, rating, and carrier reporting.

By eliminating re-keying and reducing back-and-forth data gathering, submissions are ready to quote in less than 10 minutes! This is how our MGA customers underwrite smarter and faster to unlock substantial written-premium growth without adding to headcount.

If you’re exploring ways to scale faster with AI, better data and meaningful operational efficiency, Convr welcomes the opportunity to share how leading MGAs are using Convr today.\nJust reach out to Convr today to see how we can help!

XX MIN READ

Convr® Evolves Data Catalog for Faster, More Transparent Underwriting

Convr®, took a leap toward delivering the next big advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) underwriting through the enhanced performance and usability improvements of its Data Catalog within its commercial insurance underwriting workbench in 2026. Convr’s Data Catalog makes it easier for underwriting team members to discover the thousands of data sources that are compiled in Convr’s Risk 360 data lake.\nThe leading artificial intelligence (AI) company serving commercial insurance organizations with its underwriting workbench implemented a new view for the company’s Data Catalog which aligns with its commitment to transform the commercial insurance underwriting industry and enables frictionless underwriting.\nWithin the model, users can easily glean insights from its extensive list of nearly 3,000 external data sources. Underwriters can also search across all Convr data sources, filter through the list by location, and view detailed information about each source with greater clarity. This new format allows users to quickly understand what data is available and how frequently it is refreshed.\nWhat it shows:The Data Catalog displays detailed information about each data source, including:

  • Source name
  • Data type
  • Source update frequency
  • Convr update frequency
  • State
  • Last updated date

The new table format makes it much faster and more intuitive for users to locate the data they need. The clickable links are up-to-date avenues that serve as a streamlined source to greater information and transparency into submission data. Our customers have much to gain from this new functionality.\nTogether, these advancements within the platform's user interface mark a pivotal moment, advancing the industry toward a more intelligent and trustworthy underwriting process built on accessible, high-quality data.

XX MIN READ

Are You Ready for an Underwriting Workbench? 4 Signs You’re Ready to Implement Now

A commercial property and casualty P&C insurance carrier’s sustainability and long-term success is best determined not only by their approach to solving today’s problems, but how poised they are for adaptation and future growth.\nUnderwriting workbenches are a powerful and effective solution to solving some of today’s top underwriting issues, but how they align to an organization’s existing processes, technologies and long-term goals will ultimately determine their success and lasting power.\nFor underwriting teams and commercial insurance organizations as a whole, there are some not-so-subtle signals that your underwriters could be ready for an underwriting workbench now and for many years into the future.\nTake a look below to see how these four signs show up across the people, processes and technology within your organization:

  1. Underwriting team members are forced to toggle between multiple systems to evaluate a single risk, losing valuable time that could be used working on other higher-value submissions
  2. Critical data is manually rekeyed or copy-pasted across tools, rather than being automatically and consistently captured, losing efficiency and productivity
  3. Documents such as PDFs, loss runs and emails, etc. are driving most underwriting decisions but are fragmented, manually processed files and hard to operationalize
  4. Quote and bind turnaround times are inconsistent or slipping, resulting in missed opportunities and losing business for your organization

\nOur team has deep insurance experience—so we get it. It’s tough to get everyone on board to implement a new tool or end-to-end solution . . . but the number of companies that have realized quick wins with Convr’s off-the-shelf, AI underwriting capabilities is remarkable—so why wouldn’t you give us a go? \n \nIf you’ve done a simple search online, you’ve likely already discovered the Convr AI Underwriting Workbench, considered our capabilities and have some understanding of how our solutions can solve some of your team’s biggest problems. Powered by a commercial P&C insurance ontology, our workbench enriches and expedites submissions decisions – reducing submission through quote times by 70%, increasing new business win rates, and quickly identifies renewal material changes. \nWith Convr you can start with the module that addresses your biggest bottleneck today, then grow into Convr's broader workbench over time. As a refresher, here are some proven off the shelf solutions you might consider: \nIntake: Our Intake engine eliminates manual submission processing by digitally ingesting, preparing and analyzing underwriting documents. For every submission that flows through your business, we extract key data points and augment the information with third-party data to broaden and deepen the risk profile. By automating and digitizing the insurance application process, underwriting teams can quote faster, with more confidence, enhanced application data and deeper insights. \nRisk 360: Commercial insurance underwriting teams can streamline research and enhance applicant data by enriching submissions with the power of AI. Risk 360 is a vast data lake comprised of the digital footprint of millions of businesses—built with an underlying knowledge graph that unleashes detailed insights from the intersection of tens of thousands of data elements. \n \nConvr AI: Deep Learning Models, Agentic and Generative AI are assistive to users generating a risk summary from submission data and helping customers perform their workflow tasks with greater ease, improving productivity. \nConvr has the skill and enthusiasm to quickly roll-out your project and implement one of these programs today. These off-the-shelf options we presented above are standard implementations that can be up and running for your operation in as few as four weeks and are a great way to advance your team’s underwriting business goals. Just ask and we’ll give you a customer reference that recently got up and running in as few as 19 days!\nTo learn more about the many modules within Convr’s AI-powered underwriting workbench contact us today at convr.com. \n

Realize End-to-End Underwriting Excellence with Convr AI

Experience how commercial P&C insurance organizations benefit from submission through quote with a frictionless process enriched by AI decisioning, empowering them to make better decisions, faster.