AI in Insurance Underwriting: How to Get There from Here

This IDC Perspective describes the role of AI in insurance underwriting. AI-enabled underwriting platforms are compressing traditionally manual, multiweek processes such as statement-of-values ingestion and annual portfolio reviews into workflows measured in days. Technology providers and partners are facilitating these processes through automating document ingestion and conducting data normalization, validation, and workflow orchestration across fragmented systems. Such capabilities shift human effort away from absorbing, comprehending, and making sense of data toward exercising their risk judgment and focusing on handling exceptions. Done right, human-in-the-loop controls, approval checkpoints, and auditability can ensure and strengthen underwriting and maintain regulatory compliance. The goal is not autonomy or automation for its own sake, but rather, faster and more consistent underwriting at scale."What's materially changing underwriting isn't just AI making decisions instead of people - rather, that AI is assuming and carrying out the invisible, behind-the-scenes work that it takes to arrive at decisions. By automating data ingestion, data normalization, and triaging risk, insurers can recoup weeks of underwriting capacity and simultaneously hold controls in their hands. The two together can dramatically alter how fast risk moves through the insurer organization." - Inci Kaya, research manager, Worldwide Insurance Digital Strategies, IDC