AI Underwriting: Beyond the hype | Insurance Blog

We have periodically conducted surveys on underwriting for more than 15 years to understand the state of the function and how technology is—or isn’t—helping it to evolve. In our most recent report Underwriting rewritten, we asked what percentage of time underwriters are spending on non-core tasks. This time, we saw some incremental improvement year–over–year compared to our 2021 survey but still more than a third of an underwriter’s time is spend on non-core activities such as data collection or administrative activities.  

But more than that, our 2024 survey overall expresses the hope for the future that new automation and AI technologies could help change the role of underwriting and truly reduce the time spent on non-core tasks.  

I’ve been around long enough to remember other waves of new ideas and technologies such as knowledge management, the internet of things, and analytics. And while each has found a place within the overall insurance business and technology ecosystem, one could argue that none truly changed the underwriting function entirely.  But in all the time that we have done our industry surveys over my 30-year career, I personally have never seen numbers like this: 

Embracing automation and AI 

According to the data above, the percentage of time underwriters spend on non-core tasks is set to decrease much more than just incrementally with AI and automation going forward.  Across Life, Group, Personal, and Commercial Insurance, insurance executives are convinced that AI and automation tools will change underwriting significantly and will change it relatively quickly. 

Over the last 3 years carriers have been experimenting with these technologies—doing e.g., pilots in data collection, data synthesis, and advice for underwriting.  And while not all of these pilots might have been successful, the overall conclusion seems to be now that this time there is a justification for optimism in tackling the non-core share of actuarial tasks. In fact, if you aren’t pursuing some sort of AI Underwriting driven strategy already, then you are probably already behind according to our survey. 

Here are some key data points from our recent Underwriting Executive Survey: 

• 81% of underwriting executives surveyed believe AI and gen AI will create new roles “to a large extent” or “to a very large extent”. 

• 65% of executives believe their workforce will require upskilling as AI becomes integral to creating new roles and augmenting existing ones. 

• 42% of executives think they will need to access external talent pools to fully leverage the potential of the technology 

Empowering the AI-led underwriter 

Combined with modern automation tools and advanced data ingestion capabilities, AI is perhaps the most transformative force in modern underwriting, balancing both efficiency and complexity within controlled areas. It can enable natural language processing to interact with customers and brokers to address issues and to understand requests so that they can be routed to the correct solution automations. Advanced decision elements and pattern recognition also allow for processing of a wider array of self-service requests without direct intervention. Plus, AI has the ability to orchestrate automations to provide complete self-service solutions. 

Let’s be clear: the underwriting role isn’t going away, but it will be transformed as each carrier charts the best way to blend human plus machine decision-making to improve both the speed and efficiency of underwriting outcomes. 

Your next steps as gen AI augments your workforce 

To be successful in any AI journey, carriers need to be thinking through three things from my perspective: 

1. An AI-led strategy that lays out a plan for taking advantage of these new tools within your existing environment. It needs to be grounded in a strong digital core. As AI technology evolves to become more agentic, underwriters could even enhance their productivity further by breaking down their workflow and delegating tasks to these AI agents.  
2. A talent strategy that reimagines work and is redesigning workflows to prepare management teams and underwriting organizations to take advantage of the new capabilities these solutions provide. A skills-based approach will be key and in tandem, insurers will need to align AI integration with process reinvention, ensuring responsible AI principles are adhered to throughout. 
3. A culture that is able to explore and experiment while protecting core decision making. Insurers probably need to take a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach to AI adoption, capitalizing on employee willingness and eagerness to experiment with AI. 

If you want to learn more about Accenture’s Insurance Underwriting Executive Survey, explore at Underwriting rewritten or feel free to reach out to me directly.