Here’s how you can measure what matters most
In the current insurance market, carriers can no longer rely on rising premiums to drive growth. Many lines of business are beginning to soften and margins are tightening. Inflation is pushing up claims costs and brokers are increasingly asking more of their insurer partners.
It’s clear that in order to thrive, underwriters must deliver faster quotes on the most valuable risks, align selection with appetite, improve operational efficiency and leverage data and AI for portfolio optimisation. All whilst retaining customers, generating new business and staying ahead of emerging risks… not much to ask… right?
The critical question is how underwriters can use technology to achieve these drivers. The simple answer is to invest in or upgrade their underwriting platform, but in order to do that insurers need to be able to articulate what success looks like for them. They need to identify how they’re going to measure it, and how they use this benchmark to select the right platform for them.
In our experience, many insurers struggle to articulate what value means to them. They’ve taken a step in recognising the role technology could play in helping them achieve or improve their bottom line, but aren’t able to describe what that might look like in practice.
The four drivers of underwriting value
To help, we’ve identified four value drivers every carrier should demand from their underwriting platform.
DRIVER #1:
Growth
This driver focuses on profitable, sustainable growth, the biggest concern for most carriers. Profitable growth today means balancing underwriting strategy with speed, quality, and expansion, while navigating difficult market conditions.
This can include factors like improving speed-to-quote ratio (the number one enquiry we get from our customers), the quality of risk, and the ability to expand portfolios to enter new product lines and distribution channels.
DRIVER #2:
Improve COR
Improving underwriting profitability begins with maintaining a strong Combined Operating Ratio (COR) while enabling underwriters to focus on risks that align with strategic objectives.
Improving your underwriting operations start with automating low-value tasks and streamlining workflows to increase operational throughput. Leveraging quality data and guardrails reduces manual effort and accelerates decision making for both ops and underwriting teams.
This enables better risk selection with integrated data, risk insights, and predefined guardrails to make faster, more consistent underwriting decisions.
DRIVER #3:
Managing risk
Risk management in insurance now spans the entire value chain, not just underwriting decisions. As carriers grow and operations become more complex, proactive oversight is essential to maintain compliance and control. Automated processes like bordereaux handling and delegated authority monitoring help prevent breaches and improve efficiency without slowing business.
Modern underwriting platforms embed compliance into workflows with configurable rules, audit trails, and real-time monitoring. By automating tasks and providing portfolio-level visibility, insurers can align underwriting actions with broader risk appetite and strategic objectives – turning risk management into a proactive, data-driven function.
DRIVER #4:
Talent
The approaching talent gap is a risk that shows no signs of going away. Technology can addresses the looming skills shortage by reducing administrative burden, amplifying individual capabilities, and capturing departing underwriters’ expertise.
Technology should enable underwriters to focus on analytical work that provides job satisfaction whilst preserving institutional knowledge.
So what now?
We believe that true value emerges through traceable pathways from specific capabilities to business results.
Mapping those pathways isn’t always straightforward, so we’ve developed an Underwriting Benefits Map to help carriers ask the right questions of their current or prospective technology partners. This map links value drivers to where they need to improve, how to achieve these improvements, and what to track.
As the market demands more, let us help you identify and measure what matters to your business.
Click here to download our Underwriting Benefits Map or chat to the team to find our more.