The Digital Underwriter

As the life insurance sector races to catch up with the wider industry on the path to technological integration, the digital underwriter will have a crucial role to play in developing a customer-centric business model, to provide clients with timely, accurate decisions. And in the coming months, embracing a digital-first mindset needs to be integral in driving the innovation and transformation required to embrace the potential of the digital underwriter.

This next phase of digital transformation will carry the life insurance sector to a point where it can comfortably meet evolving customer expectations. But in order to get there, life insurers must look to transform and successfully digitise the end-to-end underwriting process. Attempting to make the digital breakthrough with short-term digital solutions that only automate certain aspects of a system will no longer suffice. In fact, this approach can actually create greater complexity within the process, and it does not get to the source of the sector’s digital difficulties.

Superficial digital transformation will not have a long-term impact on the way the life insurance sector operates and rather than edging closer in small steps, it will result in the sector falling further behind its insurance counterparts as the digital gap widens exponentially.

According to the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority’s’ recent report, the wider insurance sector has begun to enthusiastically champion predictive technologies, such as AI and machine learning, to uncover data-driven insights. In fact, insurers are adopting machine learning applications faster than any other financial sector. The report revealed that the number of machine learning applications in the insurance sector will increase by 163% in the next three years, bringing it level with the more traditionally digitally-native banking sector. As a fundamental part of the insurance industry, life insurance firms must embrace this digital-first mindset or risk lagging behind.

Thanks to these new technologies, life insurers have an opportunity to do away with paper-based manual systems entirely, instead handing over this laborious and time-costly part of the process to the digital underwriter.

But evolving the underwriting process to embrace predictive technologies does not have to mean losing the human touch. If anything, in getting time – and budget – back, insurers will be able to devote more of themselves to focus on their customers and business partners. And it can’t stop there. Continued innovation will be essential as consumers’ digital expectations mature and in using  digital underwriting technology, insurers will have more time to consider the industry’s big questions.

The next step for insurers is to embrace the potential of predictive technologies, such as AI and machine learning, as a more adaptable, accessible and accurate customer-centric approach for a centuries-old industry. Download this report to learn more about augmented underwriting and how it can revolutionise the customer experience for today’s digital native consumers.