Enhanced manual underwriting: An intro to Underwriting Ease

Since joining Swiss Re over seven years ago, and now as Head of Data Driven Underwriting Solutions, I have heard again and again the challenges and opportunities related to life insurance underwriting. Distributors and customers increasingly demand a faster, friendlier customer experience, and underwriting teams look for ways to accelerate and improve the manual risk assessment process without mortality slippage. It's been a tough nut to crack, until now.

Automated underwriting engines have helped the life insurance industry take a big step forward by streamlining straight-forward applications, but a percentage of cases are still too complex and get flagged for additional, manual underwriting review.

Today, when a life insurance application is kicked out of an automated process, underwriters manually collect and sift through numerous sources of medical and non-medical data to construct a narrative that helps them understand the applicant's risk profile.

With the proliferation of third-party data sources, including clinical health data, the manual underwriting process has become disconnected, challenging, and time consuming. The knowledge and experience underwriters draw upon when manually reviewing cases is essential, but the administrative burden is not.

That's why we've created a platform to make it easier for underwriters to review referred cases, Underwriting Ease. 

Designed by underwriters, for underwriters, Underwriting Ease collects all requirements and presents the data in a way that makes it easier to identify and drill into impairments, interpret clinical health data, and determine an appropriate underwriting decision, faster.

All of the information that an underwriter needs to make a decision can be easily accessed from one page. It's a one-stop-shop for labs, prescription history, and more, from companies like ExamOne, Milliman, LexisNexis, and MIB. Additionally, leveraging Swiss Re's partnership with Diameter Health, Underwriting Ease seamlessly ingests and presents electronic health records from any EHR providers, including MIB, Clareto, and HumanAPI.

There are still plenty of opportunities to create operational efficiencies within underwriting processes, but as an industry, I'm pleased to see we are making progress.

Many life insurers have already invested in underwriting automation to transform the customer experience, increase conversions and ultimately, grow their business. 

This year, I believe it's time to focus on empowering underwriters to accelerate and improve the manual risk assessment process. 

If you'd like to request a demo of this incredible tool, kindly use the "contact" button below to send me an email. 

And in April, I'll be attending the 22ⁿᵈ Annual AHOU Conference in Hollywood, Florida and would love to share an overview of Underwriting Ease with you there too.