Artificial intelligence is already having a significant impact on the way underwriters work, and there is a real sense of optimism across our industry. Underwriters are quickly recognising the benefits of AI technology to transform the commercial and specialty insurance landscape, and they’re keen to use these tools to augment their skills.
Send recently teamed up with Intelligent Insurer to survey 300 underwriters about their views and approaches to AI adoption, and the results were positive:
- 85% of those surveyed said that insurers who could successfully deploy AI in underwriting would have a “stronger” competitive advantage
- 71% of underwriters agreed that AI would be a “key part” of their underwriting strategy over the next 12 months.
- 65% agreed that AI presents “the biggest opportunity” for improving underwriting profitability and performance in the next 12 months
The underwriters surveyed noted some of the biggest benefits of AI as extracting information from documents, reducing manual tasks, automating processes, increasing speed and efficiency, attracting and retaining talent and improving the data flow across the business.
Changing attitudes
When Intelligent Insurer and Send polled underwriters for the ‘Big Underwriting Survey 2023‘, it was notable that 82% of those surveyed were concerned that technology would negatively impact their jobs, and 72% believed that AI would reduce the number of underwriters in the industry over the coming twelve months.
We’ve always believed that technology, particularly smart AI offers untold potential to enhance underwriting and lead underwriters into a more satisfying, admin-free world. In this year’s survey, the tables have certainly turned, 65% of underwriters polled in 2024 say that do NOT envisage AI reducing the number of underwriters in the industry over the next twelve months and 75% of underwriters wanted to see further investment in AI underwriting from their company.
This about-turn represents a significant cultural shift as companies have further invested in AI tools, sought buy-in from their teams on the ground, and demonstrated that they are not to be feared.
Breaking down barriers
Despite a clear appetite for AI, the survey revealed some lingering barriers that stand in the way of forward-thinking insurers.
Regulatory and legal concerns topped the list of underwriters’ concerns, with 62% citing this as a reason they haven’t progressed in their journey to smart underwriting. Others cited cost, buy-in, and simply not knowing where to start as their biggest hurdles.
These are challenges we’ve heard before from our customers embarking on their AI journey. We know that every company is on its own unique journey and does not start from the same place.
Their concerns are justified, but they are not insurmountable hurdles for those who can map their present position and forge a clear path from the traditional manual, process-driven state to a fully data-driven, smart underwriting operation.
Overall, it’s clear from the results of the survey that underwriters are alive to the potential of AI, and can see where it has the potential to accelerate their business and enhance competitiveness in a dynamic landscape. But where there are lingering challenges, it’s the job of providers like Send to present clear use cases for the technology and make it as simple as possible to integrate it into their daily lives.
Send’s Underwriting Workbench is accelerating the journey to smart underwriting for our customers. It provides the essential AI-driven functionality to speed up processes, eliminate manual tasks, and leverage data insights to inform risk selection and pricing. We’re committed to guiding our commercial and specialty underwriting customers through the process of digitisation, and have produced a handy Maturity Framework to help them map that shift from manual to automatic underwriting.
If you’d like to talk about your company’s approach to AI – let’s chat.
To read the full survey results, click here.