According to UnderwriteMe head of Asia Pacific Paul Hughes, the company’s main purpose is to make insurance more accessible. Through technology and its underwriting engine, it enable insurers across the globe to make the underwriting process easier and quicker. This, in turn, will help more people get protected.
“We have operated for more than 10 years and have achieved the highest level of satisfaction (first in automated underwriting satisfaction survey conducted by NMG Consulting) in all of our markets for multiple years,” he said.
“With our latest ecosystem the ‘Decisioning Platform’ we take automation to new heights by automating more of the underwriting process including automatic assessments for medicals and tests. This will be transformational and allow insurers to operate at a lower cost base, thereby making insurance more accessible to more people.”
He added that it does more than just underwriting – the company also has the same solutions for claims decisioning, which is gathering more and more traction as insurers seek further operational efficiencies and ways to improve the entire customer experience.
Overcoming the competition
One of the main challenges that an insurer faces today is competition – not only for customers, but in building effective distribution channels.
“We help insurers lower their costs by automating large parts of the process which allows them to offer better value to their customers. We also enable new products to be launched quickly thereby helping them be more competitive,” Mr Hughes said.
In terms of building distribution, UnderwriteMe’s technology will enable intermediated channels to be more efficient by providing instant decisions at the point of sale, which allows advisers to spend more time serving more customers.
“We support all distribution channels such as direct-to-consumer, bank, broker and fully underwritten comparison marketplaces to name a few. This means insurers can add new channels easily and expand their reach,” he said. “Those insurers with the best underwriting technology and application process will, in our view, win the distribution war.”
However, he also pointed out that most insurers should not attempt to build their automation solutions in-house, as it requires a lot of investment and expertise that insurers might not necessarily have.
“UnderwriteMe is a specialist in automating decisioning and we are more than 10 years into that without other distractions. In our experience those that attempt to build inhouse or through external vendors to replicate this will most likely fail to achieve the full benefits that specialist systems can provide,” he said.
The impact of automation
Beyond simple efficiency improvements, automation can also allow customers to benefit from a personalised experience, which often means a quicker and shorter process to get cover in place.
“Advisers and distribution channels will be able to operate more efficiently and close more applications. Their reach will be expanded therefore leading to greater access to insurance,” he said.
“Operational teams will benefit by having a scalable solution, meaning headcount costs can be reduced over time. In addition, there will always be some applications that will require a human assessment and this means our technology will allow those resources to focus on the cases that require their experience the most.”
Automation will lead to a huge increase in available data, and new data sources will also empower underwriters and operational teams to make continual improvements in their processes. A study conducted by UnderwriteMe discovered that for a typical insurance application, through an automation engine, the data points gathered increased by more than 150 times.
“You can imagine how this data will help transform the purchasing process from removing unnecessary questions and tests to understanding how best to ask for disclosure, and how other data sources can be used to augment the process,” he said.
“We have seen a shift with many of clients valuing this data and the visualisation that our technology provides. In one example, one of our clients made over 120 changes to their underwriting processes in a 12-month period. This would be impossible without automation and the data it brings.”
The next step
There is a strong desire to use AI to replicate the underwriting process. This is not as simple as it sounds especially in the very dynamic Asian market where new products and channels are frequently launched, and where the different markets are at different levels of development.
In response, UnderwriteMe has designed its technology to work in partnership with AI models either on its own platform or with the clients’ existing models. In this way its ecosystem can support ongoing model learning and allow for A/B testing to ensure models are performing as they should and are more explainable. This augmentation will further improve automation results.
Currently, UnderwriteMe has partnered with over 35 insurers across the globe, with almost 20 being in Asia Pacific. “In addition to our clients, we are happy to be working with a network of InsurTechs, consultants and innovators in the life and health industry as we continue to explore new ways of working,” he said. A
