Technology Unleashes
Underwriters From Desks
Technology enables underwriters to leave their offices to
solidify and improve relationships with agents. By Carrie Burns
Ask many P&C insurance xperts about points of interest right now, and you’lllikelyhearthe word
“agents” somewhere in the answer. Even
a session on IT strategies in a cost-cutting
environment at ISOTECH 2009 in
November turned into a lengthy discussion about agents.
The relationship between the underwriter and agent is an important one,
especially in the current market, says
Mike Fitzgerald, senior analyst at
Boston-based Celent. He says it’s diffi-
cult to grow a business in the current
economy—you can introduce new
products, but consumers are demanding
simpler products; you can acquire other
companies, but capital markets are tight.
Thus, establishing, maintaining and
improving relationships with agents
may be the answer, he says. “And companies that take innovative approaches
are going to win.”
The responsibility to improve relationships now likely falls on the underwriter. The role of the underwriter—
especially in the personal lines P&C
industry—has changed over the past
few years, in part due to technology.
Gone are the eight-hour days of sitting
at a desk. The availability of business
rules and automated underwriting has
freed up underwriters to take on somewhat unfamiliar responsibilities, one of
which being the face and voice of the
insurer to agents.
While in the past, underwriters and
technology may not have mixed well,
Stephen Forte, a research director with
Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, says
interest in underwriting technology,
especially from personal lines, is growing. “What we’ve seen in talking to
underwriters is that it’s not really diminishing their intellectual capital or eliminating some of the processes. It’s alleviating some of their manual tasks and
enabling them to do more of the granular analysis work they really want to do.”
Technology also is freeing up some
of the underwriters’ time to become
more involved in the sales process,
Fitzgerald says. “As you put this technology in place and offer some rules-based
underwriting and pricing, you offload
