A Decade Into Accelerated Underwriting

^{May 17, 2023}

After a decade of progress and still growing, accelerated underwriting (AUW) programs are now firmly established in U.S. life insurance. To better understand this rapidly evolving landscape, Munich Re Life US conducted its third survey of U.S. insurance companies to capture new and emerging trends in the U.S. individual life AUW market.  

Compared to previous results in 2018 and 2020, this survey found that AUW usage has expanded across products and risk classes, with face amounts also rising, in part due to the increased demand for fluidless underwriting brought on by the COVID pandemic. Likewise, the underwriting tools and data sources used in AUW decisioning, whether on a routine or ad hoc basis, expanded as well, led by electronic health records and medical claims data. The survey also shed light on challenges and current limitations of AUW programs, such as the majority of accelerated decisions still extensively involving human underwriters.

In the future, human intervention is expected to decline and digital health data sources continue to gain traction as life insurance carriers work towards optimizing their accelerated underwriting programs to issue more policies with faster turnaround times, all while remaining confident in their risk-decisioning process.

Read more about emerging accelerated underwriting trends on the Munich Re Life US website  (in English only).