How This Carrier Now Works 90% Faster When Writing Commercial Policies
Customer
Tier 2 US P&C Carrier
Challenge
Improve the underwriting experience with faster data transfers and time-to-quote
Solution
FRISS Underwriting Insights
- ACORD Ingestion
Results
Time savings increased by roughly 90%
Reducing turnaround time from hours to minutes
Decrease in misinformation
Customer
This US-based Tier 2 carrier writes personal and commercial lines, including mid-market commercial. With over $2B in premiums, they write across most states and industries, primarily through a network of independent agents. The company has existed for nearly a century, and their underwriting operations have admittedly not changed much over the last 50 years. Still, the carrier considers themselves eager to undertake innovation and knows they must employ the appropriate technologies across their operations in order to excel through their next 100 years.
Challenge
In the increasingly digital age, speed-to-market is becoming a substantial driver for competitive carriers. This carrier writes primarily through independent agents, and the submission of ACORD forms is the main method for passing along information for quote requests. Tiresome forms, online portals and underwriting questionnaires, are a turn-off for agents and prospective clients who are more likely to do business with carriers that make these requests and data transmissions faster and easier.
Requesting, receiving and inputting the information needed to generate accurate underwriting decisions is tedious, with the average quote generally taking a frustrating seven days to complete.
Solution
Finding an optical character recognition (OCR) solution to translate ACORD form information became a top priority for this carrier, and opened the door to even more digital possibilities. Automated ACORD Ingestion would enable them to gain access to key policy request data more efficiently from their network of independent agents, who typically submit these forms in .pdf format. After comparing over a half-dozen solutions, this carrier decided to implement the ACORD Ingestion feature of FRISS Underwriting Insights.
This solved the immediate problem of scanning and digesting all key information from ACORD forms, but it was just the beginning. By digitizing this information, the carrier had instant access to key Underwriting Insights, provided through a proprietary system that verified, compared and presented information from thousands of reliable data sources. This information is now displayed in an easy-to-digest format to help the underwriting team make smart decisions.
Results
The carrier has implemented FRISS Underwriting Insights for GL and policy information, and is currently expanding their scope of use. In an initial side-by-side test of 50 risks, they estimated that their time savings increased by roughly 90%. Also, the risk set previously had a two-hour turnaround time, which has been reduced to just minutes, allowing their underwriting team to focus their attention on more valuable tasks.
Underwriting assistants themselves are selecting this nascent tool as it saves them time on unenjoyable, tedious tasks. The carrier has noted a decrease in misinformation that had present in the past, due to staff mis-keying during data entry. Independent agents have applauded the initiative as they are able to provide better customer service while helping the carrier win more business.
Moving toward their digitization goals, the carrier admits they will “never be finished” integrating new technologies. The FRISS Underwriting Insights solutions are currently being utilized across 40% of their commercial book, while the carrier continues to increase usage. Realizing that commercial underwriting will not ever be completely automated, they’re pleased with the level of automation already achieved by integrating this single technology. Future plans include rolling out the solution to the entire commercial book of business and continuing to enhance the value of the insights provided by augmented data.