Insurance industry shifting Tech, biz Strategies

BANGALORE: Infosys Technologies today announced that a comprehensive study on underwriting in the $222 billion commercial lines insurance industry has revealed that the US-based Property & Casualty (P&C) insurers are taking new approaches to risk assessment and acceptance to sustain profitable growth in their business.

The study, commissioned by Infosys and conducted by TowerGroup, was designed to assess the strategic direction and readiness of the commercial underwriting market, from both business and technology perspectives.

The study found that P&C commercial insurance companies are choosing to make the strategic shift towards 'flow' and 'transaction' underwriting to build competitive advantage and gain profitable market shares.

Flow underwriting promotes straight through underwriting for risk classes that were previously underwritten through manual, subjective evaluation by underwriters. The 'low' or 'no touch' transaction approach is supported by automated decision support capabilities so that only 'exceptions' are processed by underwriters.

This underwriting approach reduces cost and saves time, and also enables consistency and controlled underwriting. Furthermore, the 'low and no touch' (flow) underwriting approaches enable underwriters to focus on more complex risk submissions and develop the market through enhanced distributor interactions.

The study also uncovered that developing and deploying business process optimization capabilities was a key business goal for insurance carriers of all sizes.

Interestingly, the study found that the mindset change to move away from manual exception processing to either 'flow' or 'transaction' based underwriting, is not limited to the mega carriers - small to mid-sized carriers are just as serious about deploying process and technology enablers to create competitive advantage.

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