The insurance industry is going through a significant transformation, due to a rapid shift in the technological landscape. Whilst this is bringing an overwhelmingly positive change to the industry, it leaves room for Insurtechs to automate processes of the underwriting journey that should remain firmly within the hands of the Underwriters.

What does this mean for Silas?

Seven months ago, we spotlighted an opportunity to build an innovative solution aimed at streamlining the very technologically-outdated Commercial Lines underwriting process, whilst ensuring we respected the art of underwriting.

The first step was market validation; this involved us consulting (many) underwriters and verifying that there was a space for us. Turns out there was a major gap in the market for a player that recognised the specialty nature of Commercial Property and Energy underwriting and could implement these solutions effectively. The rest is history…

So… what will the product look like?

We are building an integrated, end-to-end product that leverages smart analytic solutions and harnesses the power of AI to accelerate routine tasks and automate processes, allowing underwriters to focus on critical and complex decision making. It’s crucial to note that these are centered around enhancing the underwriters experience, not on replacing them and as such; we do not engage in automated underwriting.

Our key tools are:

- Risk Report Summarization: We are building a custom LLM (Large Language Model) powered-application that actively supports the underwriter on risk identification and interpretation. By automating the process of manually reviewing hundreds of long reports, we will save underwriters valuable time. Our tool understands insurance terminology and identifies relevant information for risk assessment, while also providing a risk score for each report.

- Policy Document Comparison Tool: Data trends and research indicate the retirement of many experienced insurance-professionals such as Wording Specialists leading to an industry shortage. We tackle this issue by offering PDF-comparison with embedded mechanisms to compare two policy documents and highlight the modifications to text or format. This feature will include a summary of changes as well as the ability to recognise when endorsements and exclusions are either missing or have been modified.

- Talk to your Data: Replacing the need to trudge through excel spreadsheets and make endless pivot tables to gain basic insights of your data. We have enabled the underwriters to use a search-type feature that allows you to pull information from your data (key metrics and KPIs) into graphs, tables or text at the click of a button. The same feature allows you to upload documents and question specific information, be it specific clauses in a wording or present perils in a risk engineering report.

What about everyone’s favorite buzzword?

We would be remiss not to mention it … AI can improve the efficiency of the underwriting process, it comes with its own set of challenges.

One focal area for us is the risk of AI-generated information, or hallucinations, that may lead to incorrect decisions. To mitigate this, we ensure that all our automated processes require human approval and confirmation, maintaining the integrity and accuracy of underwriting decisions. We recognize that insurance is a people and data business and we know the industry values the human-centric nature of underwriting.

The EU AI Act has classified certain use cases in insurance as high-risk, setting strict standards for AI governance and data protection.

We are well aware of the implications of over-reliance on AI and are committed to following these regulations. We prioritize transparency in how we handle data, and are developing robust governance models in line with the EU AI Act.

Our commitment is to support underwriters with innovative tools, ensuring that the human element remains central to the decision making process.

Stay tuned for a deep dive into the following topics:

‘The EU AI Act’, ‘Gen AI (its wonders and its faults)’ and ‘The Underwriters Life before and after Silas’.