Crum & Forster Case Study
Crum & Forster Partners with Convr to Digitally Transform Submission Intake and Unleash Human Potential
Learn how Convr enables Crum & Forster to:
- Cut submission processing time by 50%
- Redeploy 40% of contractors to highervalue roles
- Redeploy 20% of Operations employees to revenue-generating roles
- Support an ambitious five-year growth strategy
Case Study
You don’t get to be 200 years old without doing something right. Crum & Forster is a commercial P&C carrier with a long history of offering innovative solutions to overcome challenges. The company’s Surplus and Specialty Lines (S&S) Division provides bespoke solutions for hard-to-place risks. As one of the country’s largest Excess and Surplus (E&S) carriers, Crum & Forster works with select wholesale brokers to provide the customized service the company is known for.
“I had a vision to streamline the submission intake process.”
In 2021, the S&S Division kicked off a fiveyear plan to double its top-line underwriting performance. Lauren Dieterich, Senior Vice President, Head of Operations and Digital, Surplus & Specialty, recognized that to achieve that goal, her team needed to streamline a manual, labor-intensive submission intake process.
Specifically, Dieterich envisioned using intelligent document processing (IDP) to automatically pull data elements out of submission materials. The challenge? The S&S submission process requires more flexibility than most vendors can offer. For example, the division deals mostly with wholesale brokers, which are typically not listed in an ACORD 125 form—their contact information is more often buried in a long email thread featuring multiple parties. In addition, submissions often include other documents, such as supplemental applications, driver lists or location schedules.
“I was looking for a vendor who could do more than just ACORDs,” Dieterich said. “And I wanted a vendor who could grow with us as we could consume and leverage more and more data.”
Convr brings Crum & Forster’s vision to life
Dieterich found exactly what she was looking for in Convr’s AI-infused commercial underwriting platform. The S&S Division selected Convr’s d3 Intake to enable a more efficient process for new business submission intake.
With Intake AI, Crum & Forster’s S&S Division can
Quote Faster
d3 Intake eliminates most of the data entry required to clear and prepare an underwriting file, which transforms both the underwriting and customer experience.
Streamline its submission intake process
By using d3 Intake’s IDP capabilities, the S&S Division can automatically ingest and organize information from nearly any structured or unstructured document.
Leverage data for future insights
d3 Intake enables the team to collect, analyze and retain the information from the application process—insights that can inform future pricing models, underwriting decisions or claims handling
The flexibility of Convr’s solutions is essential for Crum & Forster. Convr took time to truly understand what Crum & Forster needed, whether being able to pull specific data points from long email threads, working with a variety of structured and unstructured documents or determining source priority when presented with multiple documents. “It felt like a part of the onboarding process, not a special add-on,” Dieterich said.
“We achieved our vision of a more efficient submission intake process with Convr’s Intake AI on the front end.”
Lauren Dieterich, Senior Vice President, Head of Operations and Digital, Surplus & Specialty Division at Crum & Forster
Crum & Forster’s S&S Division saw quick results from Intake AI. In particular, the team was able to:
1. Streamline submission intake process
Before Intake AI
Before Intake AI, a team of contractors was responsible for clearing submissions—a process that required manual data entry into multiple legacy systems.
First, a submission would have to pass a clearance call, which meant combing through emails and attachments to manually enter data into a legacy system. Next, if the submission passed clearance, then it was assigned to an underwriter. That meant navigating business rules spread across multiple tabs in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Finally, the account was triaged in a separate Excel sheet with additional required inputs. “It was a labor-intensive process,” Dieterich said.
After Intake AI
Before Intake AI, a team of contractors was responsible for clearing submissions—a process that required manual data entry into multiple legacy systems.
First, a submission would have to pass a clearance call, which meant combing through emails and attachments to manually enter data into a legacy system. Next, if the submission passed clearance, then it was assigned to an underwriter. That meant navigating business rules spread across multiple tabs in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Finally, the account was triaged in a separate Excel sheet with additional required inputs. “It was a labor-intensive process,” Dieterich said.
2. Cut submission processing time by 50%
Before Intake AI
Before Intake AI, the inefficient and labor intensive submission intake process resulted in a one- to two-day backlog for submissions. The delay was especially frustrating for underwriters, who felt hampered in their ability to deliver the exceptional customer service the company prides itself on.
After Intake AI
After Intake AI, the S&S Division has cut its submission processing time in half. Typically, it sees same-day turnaround on submissions. With automatic data ingestion and a new submission intake platform, the clearance team can clear, triage and prepare underwriting files faster than before—and underwriters are equipped to work the business and win it.
3. Redeploy team members to higher-value roles
Before Intake AI
Before Intake AI, Crum & Forster’s S&S Division kept extra capacity on the clearance team to manage the backlog of submissions. After a file had cleared submission, members of the Operations team would assemble the underwriting file. The old process wasn’t an optimal way to allocate team members— and it wasn’t harnessing the potential of high performers looking to move up in the company.
After Intake AI
After Intake AI, there was no submissions backlog even at peak activity, and no need for overtime or excess capacity. So the company’s S&S Division reinvested the savings in its people—fostering skills development, creating paths for career advancement and aligning people’s work with the organization’s goals.
Within a month of implementing Intake AI, Crum & Forster’s S&S Division was able to more strategically allocate its most important resources: its people. Approximately 40% of the clearance team members moved into file preparation roles. In turn, 20% of the Operations team was redeployed into revenue-generating production and underwriting positions.
Crum & Forster doesn’t just pride itself on its commitment to clients—it values its relationships with employees. “We have a culture of partnership and loyalty between the company and employees,” Dieterich said. “We’ve been able to move people to revenue-generating roles. We’ve been able to offer real career advancement and more rewarding, complex work, for both contractors and high performers. That’s phenomenal, and it helped us improve retention,” she added.
“The bulk of the savings came from being able to redeploy part of my Operations team into underwriting roles. Now our human resources are aligned with what’s really going to drive growth, and I could achieve those additional goals with no extra spend.”
Lauren Dieterich, Senior Vice President, Head of Operations and Digital, Surplus & Specialty Division at Crum & Forster
Digital technology that enables true change
Crum & Forster’s S&S Division knew what it needed: a more efficient submission intake process. And it knew how to make it happen: by leveraging IDP to automate and streamline how it was ingesting and capturing data.
“Convr provided exactly what I was looking for,” Dieterich said. Convr’s IDP capabilities made it possible for the S&S team to automate business rules and, in turn, to develop a proprietary submission intake platform. That platform has enabled a more streamlined intake process that reduces submission intake time by half.
But true digital transformation comes from using technology not just to reduce costs, but to do things differently. Crum & Forster did just that, by offering advancement opportunities to contractors and redeploying Operations employees into critical—and revenue-generating—underwriting roles.
“Now we have other questions to answer,” Dieterich said. “How do we extend the Convr relationship to use more of the data that d3 Intake can pull out of documents?”
In short, by leveraging Convr’s Intake and its IDP capabilities, Crum & Forster’s S&S Division has the foundation it needs to achieve its goal of doubling its top line within five years. It has also planted the seeds for the next phase of its growth strategy.
“Convr has been instrumental in enabling our five-year growth plan.”
Lauren Dieterich, Senior Vice President, Head of Operations and Digital, Surplus & Specialty Division at Crum & Forster
Benefits Experienced by Our Customers
What Matters Most to You?
Profitability
Expand capacity, gain competitive advantage and grow revenue with embedded business rules, better access to relevant data and improved decisioning.
Price Adequacy
Identify more or less risky submissions and segments in the specified population so pricing is more aligned with relative exposure.
Productivity
Prioritize submissions to rapidly narrow risks within appetite and deep dive on selected risks.
Customer Experience
Reduce data gathering touchpoints and the time associated with record retrieval and validation for applicants.
Loss Avoidance
Calibrate individual risks and predict those most likely to experience a loss in the coming year.
Underwriting Efficiency
Drive efficient submission intake, prioritization, underwriting analysis and decisioning with a full-suite of AI-infused commercial insurance tools.
Speed to Quote
Increase quote-ratios and new business by accelerating the underwriting process from intake to data collection to identifying the right submission questions and answers.
Underwriting Experience
Streamline the underwriters’ work experience with more complete and accurate data, clearer insights and heightened decision confidence.
The Convr product suite addresses all phases of the underwriting process leading up to final selection and pricing.
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Intake AI™
Eliminates manual submission paperwork by ingesting, preparing, and analyzing submissions for a more effective, digital process.
Risk 360 AI™
Provides underwriters a unified view of a submission’s digital footprint to correctly classify and respond to underwriting questions.
Answers AI™
Applies decision science to correctly answer complex underwriting questions.
Score AI™
Applies decision science to risk selection, relativity, and lead scoring.
Convr empowers P&C carriers with a digital end-to-end underwriting management platform powered with a patented-AI decisioning engine that transforms the underwriting experience. Carriers of all sizes, including many of the tier-1 carriers, trust Convr to help them transform their commercial underwriting operations with straight-through processing and more complete, accurate data to make better decisions.
Convr’s Underwriting Command Center brings together data, discovery and decisioning intelligence through its patented machine-learning engine so carriers such as Crum & Forster, Selective and Hiscox are able to reduce application questions by over 70% and increase underwriting productivity by up to 10x.