"If you had a magic wand and could design your own underwriting automation system, what are the top two key benefits you'd want it to deliver?"

That’s the question posed by FirstBest Systems to an audience of senior underwriting managers and vice presidents of commercial lines at the NAMIC Commercial Lines Underwriting Seminar on

Text Box: “I want to reduce the number of people handling a submission, and cut down the back-and-forth questions between underwriters and agents.” – Commercial Lines Specialist

February 29, 2008. While audience members – representing a wide range of property & casualty insurance carriers nationwide – were allowed to respond in their own words, FirstBest found that the responses generally fell within the following categories:

  • Efficiency - Improved underwriting productivity
  • Speed - Business agility, flexibility, and the ability to make changes quickly
  • General ease of use
  • Ease of doing business with agents - Including real-time collaboration
  • Efficiency - Improved underwriting productivity
  • Speed - Business agility, flexibility, and the ability to make changes quickly
  • General ease of use
  • Ease of doing business with agents - Including real-time collaboration
  • Integration - Seamless integration with existing systems, and the ability to unite disparate systems
  • Visibility - Greater management visibility into underwriting processes
  • Discipline - Underwriting integrity and consistency in applying rules
  • Scalability - Ability to grow and scale the business profitably with existing resources
  • Added functionality - Predictive modeling and analytics integration

 

Text Box: “The ideal system would allow our customers—the agents—to interact with our associates and view the system together. This would allow us to provide better service.” – Branch Underwriting Manager

The overwhelming winner? Increased Efficiency and Productivity. Most respondents wanted a system that enabled underwriting to be more efficient and productive, including straight-through processing and reduced rekeying of information. This requirement not only garnered the most total responses, but it was also was most often positioned as number one on the respondents’ wish list.

Tied for second place were Speedand Agility and Ease of Use. Underwriting leaders want systems that enable them to change rules quickly, to enable them to respond rapidly to changing market conditions. At the same time, they want user-friendly, intuitive systems that will make it easy for them to do their jobs, not add complexity or require extensive training.  


Text Box: “We want to improve the customer experience, both agent and policy holder.” – Commercial Underwriting Manager

The fourth most popular response was Ease of Doing Business With Agents. Carriers want to improve the customer experience for agents by making it easy to upload submissions and enable real-time collaboration with underwriters. Some respondents wanted to reduce the number of times agents need to rekey data and to reduce unnecessary back-and-forth questions.

Integration was the next highest on underwriter wish lists. Sometimes this was expressed in the context of integrating new technology with existing legacy systems. In other cases, the respondents were seeking systems that would integrate the disparate systems and islands of information that exist along different commercial lines. Underwriters want one unified system that will give them an enterprise view of their underwriting process.

Text Box: “We want increased premium capacity with the same amount of staff, for profitable growth.” – Director of Commercial Lines Closely related to this need for integration was a call for Management Visibility into the entire underwriting life cycle, which ranked next on the list. Underwriters want to have the ability to closely monitor processes and mine submissions for patterns, and see measure results.

Next was a call for greater underwriting Discipline and Consistency, ensuring the integrity of underwriting and rules-based processes. To assure profitable underwriting, managers need to know that submissions are handled accurately and consistently.

 


Finally, forward-thinking underwriters wished for strategic advantages, such as the ability to grow and Scale the Business without adding additional staff. Other respondents prized specific functionality such as Predictive Modeling and Analytics. While these responses were fewer in number, they were nonetheless the top requirement for no less than 8% of the respondents.

Summary

All of the participants in this survey ranked their top two wishes in a comprehensive underwriting solution. It would be inaccurate to conclude that any of the requirements cited were lower in importance, simply because fewer people named them. All represent key requirements among a community of senior-level underwriting managers in commercial-lines insurance carriers. A number of respondents expressed multiple wishes in their two answers, and these were counted as more than two responses in the survey analysis. In fact, many of these top underwriting automation requirements overlap and inter-relate in a variety of ways.

Underwriters want the right systems and tools, but they don’t want to abandon their investments in existing technology and intellectual property. They seek greater precision and discipline, and more consistent enforcement of business rules, but they also want flexibility and agility.

Above all, commercial carriers are seeking ways to be more efficient and productive—not for mere cost savings, but to achieve strategic advantage. Carriers want to be the insurer of choice, to be so easy to work with, their agents and brokers won’t take their business anywhere else.

With more streamlined underwriting processes, underwriters can handle more business, grow and scale their businesses profitably, and free their most seasoned underwriters for more complex risks. And by integrating all the capabilities they seek across all lines of business, carriers can achieve true enterprise underwriting.

 

About FirstBest Systems, Inc.

Founded in 2006, FirstBest® Systems delivers advanced Underwriting Management Systems™ (UMS) that enable commercial insurance carriers to profit from better underwriting. The FirstBest UMS ™ is a next-generation underwriting solution for commercial-lines carriers that enables them to write more business and write better business. Insurers can scale their underwriting profitably while achieving greater speed and business agility; foster real-time collaboration to make it easy for agents to do business with carriers; promote enhanced underwriting discipline and consistency; and empower management with greater visibility into underwriting processes. For more information, please visit www.firstbest.com or call 1.888.863.6095.