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How Convr’s AI is empowering and retaining the underwriting workforce

The future of work is no longer a far-off vision, it’s here and now. Insurtech has become a powerful driver of change in the insurance industry. With digital transformation revolutionizing the workplace, organizations need to adapt quickly to new ways of working to retain their top talent and achieve greater productivity, efficiency and profitability. Part of that revolution is in the insurtech space where artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are driving competitive advantage.\nIn the insurance industry, underwriting is a key space where AI can help improve workflow efficiencies. Underwriters are bogged down and burned-out by ever-increasing submission volume, tedious manual research and loads of data. The fatigue is real. They’re pressured between revenue and caution when making decisions. Their processes can be mundane, time-consuming, dated and loaded with setbacks. But Convr removes these burdens by simplifying and streamlining the intake process. Our frictionless underwriting automation solutions can be quickly and efficiently implemented and make an immediate difference for underwriters by reducing their manual processes, freeing them up to focus on decisioning and pricing – the art of underwriting.

Underwriters Need AI

There’s no better time than now to get underwriters the help they truly need. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment of insurance underwriters is projected to decline 2% by 2030. Despite lower numbers, about 8,300 openings for insurance underwriters are projected each year, on average. By equipping underwriters with advanced tools that help them operate more effectively, Convr is helping support a culture of underwriting excellence that values efficiencies and attracts and retains talent. And the next generation of underwriters is expecting this. They want to work with the modern technologies that allow them to work productively from anywhere using AI. The improved technology supports high-quality work and fosters a more positive relationship with the organization. Happy employees are productive employees.\nIn the coming years, the line between the real world and digital world will continue to blur. While consumer-oriented technologies continue to expand and people become accustomed to them, it’s time to take these developments into the commercial insurance underwriting environment. Convr AI is one way to easily improve your organization’s technology infrastructure and enhance the employee experience for underwriters.

In insurtech as in other fields, implementations are often complex. It’s not unusual for problems to arise before a new solution is fully deployed, integrated with external technologies, and delivering robust business value.\nProblems can result from a wide range of technical and organizational issues. These can include everything from software incompatibilities and products that have been rushed to market without adequate testing, to insufficient resources, a lack of key stakeholder alignment, inadequate project management skills, insufficient risk mitigation, and infrequent or ineffective communications.\nAvoiding these problems, and resolving them quickly when they occur, requires a highly qualified, committed partner with a strong focus on customer success. Our view is that the appropriate alignment of people, processes, and technology creates the foundation for a successful implementation.\nAs carriers are assessing potential insurtech partners and solutions, they should look for a well thought out and developed team so that the risks to an in scope, on time, and within budget delivery are expertly controlled. Here are some of the things to look for when assessing an insurtech solution:

People

Implementation professionals should be highly skilled individuals who recognize their team’s importance to each customer’s success. In addition to efficiently integrating, onboarding and training users, the implementation team should facilitate a smooth handoff to a dedicated Customer Success Manager. Customer Success Managers function as trusted advisers who can guide customers toward maximizing the value of their investments in technology-enabled transformation. They should also act as the customer’s voice within the insurtech organization. Implementation teams can surface customer concerns, advocate for effective solutions, and influence the development of future products, all of which can drive additional customer value and greater insurtech success.

Processes

Effective, well-documented processes help optimize the customer journey by ensuring the right resources are available when needed and making the most of everyone’s time. They provide structure and consistency as well as the flexibility to address unique requirements and unforeseen events. Processes should include steps for measuring customer satisfaction and other implementation metrics. These qualitative and quantitative measures can help insurtechs identify and prioritize needed changes. In doing so, they can feed a cycle of continuous improvement—and greater customer satisfaction.

Technologies

Tools and technologies can help optimize change management, reduce project thrash and deliver a smooth implementation. Effective technologies should identify critical milestones and dependencies, and flag any warning signs. They should incorporate analytic measures that can identify where roadblocks are occurring and what process changes are needed to optimize future implementations.By bringing together the people, processes and technologies needed for a smooth implementation, insurtechs can generate a strong win/win. They can accelerate time-to-value for their customers while positioning themselves and their customers for long-term success as the insurtech revolution moves forward.

When you talk about insurtech innovation, many think of Silicon Valley as its natural geographic center. After all, Silicon Valley has been home to many great technology innovations dating back to World War II. To this day, it still gets a disproportionate share of VC funding and startup headlines. However, despite all the glory in Silicon Valley, the truth is the Midwest holds key advantages for an insurtech startup that many startups have yet to realize.

Easy access to insurers

The Midwest is home to 874 insurance carriers, representing a remarkable 36% of all carriers in the U.S. insurance industry. This includes major players, such as Zurich, CNA, State Farm, Progressive, West Bend, Allstate, Nationwide, RLI and American Family. Face-to-face interaction is always more valuable than long-distance communication and this is especially true in insurance. In today’s digital age of thin, shallow prospecting emails, texting and cold calls, being in close physical proximity with one’s customers and partners is key to building true, strong and long-lasting relationships. A Midwest location also makes it easy to access both coasts, which lets insurtechs be at any carrier’s doorstep within a few hours.\n

More efficient operations

The Midwest is also easier on a startup’s P&L. For example, the average cost of renting an office space in San Francisco, CA is $81.78 per square foot, in Columbus, OH it is $20.19 (representing a savings of 75%). This also applies to some degree to salaries, supplies and other common business expenses. Lower expenses means more flexibility; it also means successful startups will start accumulating profits faster.

Access to top talent

There is a strong base of both insurance and technology talent in the Midwest. This comes from the significant insurance presence in the region as well as from the value that is placed on education and innovative research. University of Wisconsin-Madison with its great risk management curriculum, University of Iowa with its tech expertise and the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University with its mastery in business skills are all examples of great sources for talent. Access to a large, developed talent pool is critical for a growing business. This is especially true in the current job market, which has candidates at an advantage.\nWith location, cost and talent all in the insurtech’s favor, it’s easy to see why the Midwest is such an advantage for these types of companies. From our own experience here at Convr, we can attest to the great value the Midwest has brought our business. We believe that we owe our success, at least in part, to our Midwestern roots. So, the next time you talk about insurtech innovation hot spots, look beyond the Valley to the Great Plains – you may find it makes more sense in nearly every way.

In recent years, I’ve seen multiple insurance software implementations, mainly core systems for policy, claims and billing administration. During this time, I’ve noticed a pattern of characteristics for nearly every implementation, mainly:

• Large scope, often a multi-phased approach, focused on many areas of the insurer’s organization and workflows.
• The need for a Systems Ingetrator (SI) assigned by the vendor to lead the project, typically via a third party consulting firm.
• Multiple, regular visits with the client onsite.
• Custom integration work with other systems, heavily dependent on software versions.
• Significant investment not just for the carrier’s business stakeholders, but also from IT – often paralyzing their organization for the duration of the implementation and for a period of time afterwards.
• Timelines that span a year or longer.
• In addition to the vendor’s software license fee, there are fees for the implementation itself as well as the third party cost mentioned above.

When combined together, these characteristics create a stigma: it’s painful to implement new insurance software. However, there is hope. There is a newer breed of offerings that frequently enable insurers to move quickly, usually falling into the category known as insurtech solutions. How is newfound speed possible?\nWell, most insurtech solutions are not traditional core software implementations. In fact, the majority are focused on automating and improving the effectiveness of workflows outside the carrier's primary systems. For example, automating the intake of application documents to replace manual data entry or substituting the online research required to underwrite a risk with access to a specialized dataset.\nLet’s break down each of the characteristics of and insurtech implementation to understand the difference:

• Smaller scope, often focused on one specific area of the insurer’s organization and workflow.
• No SI, in fact there are very few resources required compared to the traditional software implementation.
• Onsite client visits are minimal, as the scope is much simpler to gain consensus on across all key stakeholders. Third party consultants are usually not needed.
• Most of the time, integrations are done using existing APIs on both the vendor and insurers sides, requiring only a simple mapping exercise to get up and running. In other cases, a vendor’s portal can be used to forego system-to-system connections. This is often ideal for pilots where the insurer wants exposure to the solution without requiring IT involvement.
• Overall, less investment from the insurer in terms of IT and additional labor.
• Short, often same-quarter timelines that enable the insurer to show ROI to their board quickly.
• Simple fee structure – typically services such as implementation and training are included in the software’s licensing fee.

\nThe key here is many insurtech solutions can have the same level of impact as core insurance software and they can be implemented in far less time. This isn’t to diminish the importance of the latter, but to simply point out that there are massive gains that can be quickly realized by insurers who use insurtech to fill the gaps in their current workflows. The low-hanging fruit is out there. Are you taking advantage of it?\n

One of the cofounders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, is famous for his 7 Star Design Principle. His approach starts with defining what a 5 Star customer experience looks like, then continues to push the boundaries, making it better and better, until the realm of possibility is left behind. He draws the line of what is possible at 7 Stars in his business, but his ideas go way beyond that. Take a look at how he defines each level within his part of the hospitality industry.\nSo what could this approach look like if applied to commercial P&C insurance, specifically new business quoting? Here is one way to envision it (each level builds on the previous unless otherwise stated):\n5 Stars: Contact your agent, give a bunch of information about your business, wait about a week for your quote, purchase a policy.6 Stars: Your agent also recommends services such as safety and loss prevention programs that come with or will reduce the cost of your policy.7 Stars: Your agent provides your quote same-day.8 Stars: You are required to give only your business name and address to get your quote.9 Stars: Your agent anticipates your needs and contacts you when the time is right with the best quote already in-hand.10 Stars: Your agent creates a magical forcefield that prevents your business from ever suffering a loss. This magic is offered at 1/10 the price of an insurance policy and obsoletes the entire industry.\nIn both industries (hospitality and insurance), each level progressively adds more value, either by including additional services that will be of use or by reducing the time required of the customer or prospect. However, while it may only be realistic to get to 7 Stars in the hospitality industry, in the case of insurance, achieving 8 or even 9 Stars is possible.\nExpand your definition of “great” and push for the absolute highest level of excellence to create a truly world-class customer experience. Given its strong Net Promoter Score and current $38 billion valuation, I’d say it worked for Airbnb.

Convr knows it’s not the underwriting team members that are limiting improved business performance . . . it’s the process. Over the past 10 years we’ve confirmed that increased submission flow can and is best managed with technology.

It’s also true that working on the best submissions and correctly identifying key exposures creates added capacity and better performance. With more than 100 years of combined insurance experience, our team knows that wasted time and effort prohibit profitability.

What we’ve seen is that there are three key areas holding underwriting teams back from greater success. We’ve outlined what we believe are three critical blockers:

1. Wasted Time

Too much underwriting effort goes to waste. Underwriting team members are wasting their time on manual processes that severely constrict the submission through quote process. Imagine no more rekeying and double entries. If you could have the most current technology and workflows at the palm of your hands and you knew it would be a surefire way of getting things on track, wouldn’t you try it?

2. Poor Quality Submissions

Underwriting resources are being consumed by low-quality and incompletesubmissions, such as deals unlikely to close or those that are outside the company’s risk appetite. Redirecting time away from these submissions and redirecting toward strategic opportunities that align with risk appetite would enable the team to focus on risks that fit company objectives and are more likely to bind.

But with The Convr AI Underwriting Workbench, we score the risk for you. Before your underwriting team members go and spend a bunch of time on a submission that might not otherwise be quoted, we let them know if it will be worth their while.

3. Dated Tech

Insurers believe AItechnology can improve submission digitization, prioritization and efficiency, yet many are still reliant on manual efforts and dated processes. Their tech stack is stalling progress . . . with inefficiency and failure to adopt modern technologies. And these are technologies that can be easily implemented in a few short weeks.

Underwriting inefficiencies are operational challenges that carry real costs. Time spent on unwinnable deals leaves high-value business unquoted and reduces the ratio of in-appetite business bound.

As the commercial insurance industry and world of underwriting grows in complexity, tools that are current and modern can offer the potential to streamline processes. There’s no longer a need for numerous system access points and tools to assess risk, track submissions, and inform decisioning. Now there’s a way to avoid the number of clicks in and out of a myriad of systems and screens. With Convr, you can avoid fragmented workflows and redundancy.‍

About Us

Convr is a modularized AI underwriting, data, and intelligent document automation workbench powered by a commercial P&C ontology that enriches and expedites the commercial insurance business flow with the best data, underwriting insights, business classification, and risk scoring – reducing submission through quote times by 70%, increasing new business win rates, and quickly identifying renewal material changes.

We can do it all within our Convr AI Underwriting Workbench. We can collect submission data, initiate rate, quote, and collaborate to expedite the best submissions within a single transparent workflow all within a single pane. If you’d like to learn more about Convr’s solution to the top three commercial P&C insurer underwriting hurdles limiting efficiency and profitability, click here to contact us to learn more.