July 21, 2026
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New Convr Survey Uncovers the Real Bottleneck: It's the Data, Not the People
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New Convr Survey Uncovers the Real Bottleneck: It's the Data, Not the People

Commercial P&C carriers cite manual data entry, legacy technology, and fragmented submissions as the top forces slowing underwriting — pointing to a tooling problem, not a talent problem.

CHICAGO (July 21, 2026) — Convr®, the leading AI-native underwriting workbench purpose-built for commercial P&C insurance, today released new findings from its 2026 Convr Insurance Talent and Tech Trends Survey that challenge a long-standing industry narrative.

While carriers continue to cite talent shortages as a primary obstacle to faster, more consistent underwriting, the survey of 211 commercial insurance professionals reveals that the real bottleneck is the data and technology environment underwriters are forced to work within.

Underwriters aren't slow. Their tools are.

When asked what slows down underwriting most at their companies today, respondents pointed overwhelmingly to data and tooling problems rather than people problems:

  • 35.1% cited manual data entry as a top barrier
  • 27.5% pointed to dated, legacy technology
  • 24.6% identified too many submission data sources
  • 23.2% named old processes
  • 21.3% reported lack of reliability and consistency in their current systems

Compounding the issue, 63% of carriers report operating in hybrid technology environments — a legacy core with cloud-based tools layered on top — and another 22.7% remain predominantly legacy on-premise. Only 14.2% describe their core underwriting platform as mostly modern SaaS or cloud-native.

The talent narrative deserves a closer look.

When asked about the hardest underwriting talent attributes to acquire, the top response was "high productivity" (50.2%), a quality that depends as much on the systems underwriters use as on the underwriters themselves. Other top-cited attributes included insurance expertise (43.1%), technology competence (38.9%), and the ability to source appropriate data (37%).

"For years, the industry has framed underwriting capacity as a talent problem and there's no question the talent pipeline matters," said John Stammen, Chief Executive Officer at Convr. "But our data tells a more honest story. Underwriters aren't slow. They're being asked to do extraordinary work on top of fragmented data, manual entry, and legacy systems that were never designed for the volume or complexity of today's P&C market. The carriers winning the productivity battle aren't the ones hiring more underwriters, they're the ones giving their underwriters the data, tools, and the workflow to actually do their jobs."

Underwriters know exactly what they need.

When asked what their underwriting teams would benefit most from, respondents pointed to capabilities that directly address the data and tooling gap:

  • 47.4% cited AI tool training
  • 46.9% cited pre-screened and enriched submissions
  • 45.5% cited simplified access to data
  • 42.2% cited better historical account and loss data
  • 36.5% cited improved data source visibility

These are not aspirational asks. They are foundational requirements and they map directly to the capabilities Convr delivers through its modular AI-powered underwriting workbench.

"Every carrier we work with has talented underwriters," Stammen added. "What they don't have yet is an environment that lets those underwriters operate to the best of their abilities. That's the gap Convr was built to close. When you take manual data entry off an underwriter's plate, you don't just save time. You unlock judgment, speed, and consistency at scale."

About the 2026 Convr Insurance Survey

The 2026 Convr Insurance Talent and Tech Trends Survey was conducted in April and reflects responses from 211 commercial insurance professionals working in property and casualty, with strong representation from leadership (35.1%), VP/Executive (37%), and management (42.2%) roles across carriers, MGAs, brokerages, and specialty markets.

For more information, visit convr.com.

Media Contact:
Alex Williams
alex.williams@convr.com
217-737-2782

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 The Underwriting Eco-system

About Convr

Convr is a modular AI underwriting, data and intelligent document automation workbench grounded in the only P&C-specific Risk Context Engine that delivers consistent, traceable, verifiable risk data, in-line. The result: full lifecycle visibility from submission to renewal, better risk selection, faster decisions, and more profitable accounts across rate, quote, bind workflows.

Trusted by Leading Commercial Carriers, MGAs and Brokers

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Crestwell Underwriters Expands New Partnership with Convr® to Modernize Commercial Underwriting

CHICAGO (July 7, 2026) – Convr®,the leading underwriting workbench for commercial insurance organizations, offering a modular platform that streamlines underwriting workflows from submission to decision, today announced an expanded partnership with Crestwell Underwriters, a provider of specialty property insurance programs designed for condominium and homeowners associations.

Crestwell Underwriters originally approached Convr to address a familiar challenge across commercial P&C underwriting: a manual, time-intensive submission process that pulled experienced underwriters away from higher-value risk decisions. The company began with Convr's Intake module to automate and streamline its submission workflow.

"Crestwell Underwriters first saw value in Convr's Intake module and recognized that Convr could help eliminate submissions that didn't meet our risk appetite and reduce the need for manual review by an underwriter," said Paul DiFrancesco, ChiefUnderwriting Officer at Crestwell Underwriters.

The partnershiphas since expanded. Crestwell Underwriters now leverages both Convr Intake and Convr Scores, gaining a more complete view of each submission and a faster path from data to decision.

"Crestwell Underwriters is primed to take their underwriting to the next level through the power of Convr," said John Stammen, Chief Executive Officer at Convr."What sets Crestwell apart is their willingness to challenge the status quo and envision the best approach to commercial underwriting.”

By combining Intake and Scores, Crestwell Underwriters has placed their organization in a position to process more business, focus their underwriters on the risks that truly fit their appetite, and deliver faster, more consistent decisions to their broker partners.

About Convr Intake and Scores

Intake ingests, splits, classifies, extracts and prioritizes precise data from structured and unstructured documents including: PDF, Excel, Word, and emails to automate and streamline clearance and loss analysis workflows.

Scores helps underwriters evaluate and prioritize submissions to ensure quoted business fits their risk appetite.

“This is exactly the kind of forward-thinking partnership we built Convr to support, and we're proud to be on this journey with them,” said Stammen.

Media Contact
Alex Williams
Sr. Promotions Manager
alex.williams@convr.com
217-737-2782

‍

XX MIN READ

Convr® Makes the Industry's Only Commercial P&C Risk Context Engine Available to AI Agents via Model Context Protocol (MCP)

CHICAGO (June 25, 2026) – An underwriter reviewing a $40M manufacturing submission can now ask their AI assistant — Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or any compatible agent, "What are the key risk characteristics on this account and how does it compare to similar risks?" and get an answer grounded in Convr's commercial P&C Risk Context Engine (RCE). That includes exposure profile, prior losses, peer benchmarks, and classification, all traceable to source.  

Convr® has added support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard that lets AI agents call external systems as tools, making the RCE the industry's only commercial P&C knowledge graph and semantic ontology purpose-built for underwriting — available to any MCP-compatible AI system.

What underwriters can now do from inside their AI agent of choice:

  • Triage new submissions against carrier appetite  
  • Pull exposure summaries, prior-loss context, and peer benchmarks mid-conversation with a broker
  • Validate classifications and surface missing information before binding
  • Ground AI-drafted quote rationale, declination letters, and referral memos in RCE data the underwriter can trace

Because the RCE is calibrated against real commercial P&C submissions and refined in production across carriers, MGAs, and brokers, every response carries the same grounding and traceability as work done directly in the Convr Underwriting Workbench.

"Underwriting decisions are only as good as the context behind them, and the best source of commercial P&C insurance context is the Convr Risk Context Engine," said Harish Neelamana, Founder, President and Chief Product Officer at Convr. "With MCP, an underwriter can stay in Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or whichever AI agent their carrier has standardized on, and the RCE meets them there — with the same grounded, traceable intelligence they'd get inside the Convr Underwriting Workbench. The decision gets made faster, with better context, and the underwriter never has to leave the tool they're already in."


Availability
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MCP connectivity is available to Convr Underwriting Workbench customers. Carriers, MGAs, and brokers interested in learning more can visit convr.com or contact a Convr representative.

Media Contact
Alex Williams
Senior Promotions Manager
alex.williams@convr.com

‍

XX MIN READ

Convr® Delivers AI Underwriting Across Guidewire, Duck Creek, Sapiens, and Beyond

CHICAGO (June 23, 2026) – Convr®, the leading AI UnderwritingWorkbench for commercial property and casualty (P&C) insurance, today affirmed its commitment to a core-system-agnostic architecture that deliversAI-powered underwriting across every major policy administration platform including Guidewire, Duck Creek, Sapiens, and other core systems used by carriers and MGAs worldwide.

The announcement comes as commercial insurance organizations confront a difficult modernization reality: the speed of AI is accelerating, but core system replacement cycles remain measured in years, not months. Carriers and MGAs cannot afford to wait for a full core system transformation before deploying AI in underwriting, and they cannot afford to be locked into AI tools that work with only one platform. Convr's architecture is designed expressly for this moment, bringing AI-powered intake, enrichment, classification, scoring, and agentic decisioning to underwriting teams without disrupting their existing systems of record.

Built to integrate, not to replace

Convr's AI Underwriting Workbench is purpose-built as a modular layer that integrates with, not in place of, a carrier's existing system architecture. Through modern APIs, configurable data exchanges, and a flexible integration framework, Convr's platform connects with the major commercial insurance ecosystems, including:

·      Guidewire

·      DuckCreek

·      Sapiens

·      Legacy and proprietary systems

Convr's integration approach is grounded in the same proprietary commercial P&C ontology that powers the rest of the workbench, allowing the platform to translate between data models, classification schemas, and exposure structures across systems. The result: underwriters get a unified, AI-powered submission experience regardless of which core platform sits behind it.

"Underwriting transformation cannot wait for core system transformation," said John Stammen, Chief Executive Officer at Convr. "Our customers run on every major platform in the industry, and they need AI that works with what they already have. We built Convr from day one to be the connective tissue between underwriting intelligence and core systems, not a replacement for either."

Availability

Convr's Underwriting Workbench and powerful Risk Context Engine is available today for carriers and MGAs operating on any major commercial insurance core system. Organizations interested in learning more can visit convr.com or contact a Convr representative.

Media Contact
‍Alex Williams
Senior Promotions Manager
alex.williams@convr.com

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