Leveraging data, analytics and automation (including AI/NLP) to transform underwriting operations in the Lloyd's and London market

Summary

This report explores the automatic extraction and enrichment of unstructured pre-bind data to streamline processes and ultimately improve underwriting decisions in the London market. Discussions were moderated by David McKenzie, IT Business relationship Director at CNA Hardy, and AI and transformation expert Sumeet Goswami, Head of Digital Transformation & Insurance Consulting at EXL. This summary explores the key themes from the discussions that followed.

Vision – why embark on the automation journey?

To start the benchmarking discussions we asked participants to share some background and drivers for their automation initiatives, which included improving underwriting capacity and moving away from transaction-based risk selection towards the ultimate goal of portfolio-driven risk assessment through data-driven decision making.

First steps

The first step is to identify the first process to automate, what Sumeet Goswami described as the “low hanging fruit” – an application of automation that would have immediate and apparent business value, and act as a test case and ‘pilot’ to highlight the speed to value and feasibility of automation. Working with EXL, one insurer conducted an end-to-end process review - a diagnostic methodology looking at the whole underwriting process - to identify where efficiency and effectiveness benefits might be gained through automation, analytics and process improvement and eventually AI.

Renewals were identified as the initial pilot for one insurer, because they were necessary and business critical but also time (and resource) consuming: it was a data intensive, repetitive process and one that currently caused delay and backlogs – which meant any positive impact would be immediately tangible, readily communicated and (one hopes) widely appreciated ‘by the business’.

Sumeet:

The original automation (of renewals) demonstrated that automation could work in the client’s environment and their systems were compatible, and that we could reduce processing time from days to minutes…clearly highlighting the benefits of automation.

Pre-bind submissions are another area participants identified where automation can have immediate, and immediately tangible business benefits. Traditionally in the Lloyd’s and London markets, underwriters send ...

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