The pandemic has forced the industry to hasten its embrace of automation. By the start of this year, over 40% of life insurers had either already incorporated some degree of accelerated and automated underwriting into their new business process, or had imminent plans to do so. This was a dramatic increase from 18% the year before – according to research from Celent.
Munich Re Life US conducted an accelerated underwriting survey to capture new and emerging trends in the U.S. individual life accelerated underwriting market.
One of the hardest challenges Life insurers encounter when adopting accelerated underwriting (AU) is figuring out how to compensate for the loss of information previously derived from blood and urine tests.
Over the last 5 years, the life insurance industry has experienced an exponential growth in accelerated underwriting (AUW) programs. As the life insurance underwriting process continues to provide less invasive accelerated pathways, insurers increasingly rely on self-disclosed information for key risk factors instead of observed measures under traditional underwriting, such as smoking status and build.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for accelerated underwriting (AUW) in a fluidless environment has become urgent. The webinar on “Risk Selection in a Fluidless Environment” explores how we can understand if and when fluid testing is useful or needed in the underwriting process.
How insurers use big data and artificial intelligence to support their claims and underwriting strategies is likely to accelerate as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prior to COVID-19, 46% of American adults did not own life insurance and of those who did, many were underinsured, according to research by the Life Insurance and Marketing Research Association.
The industry has been talking about the “future of UW” for decades, but now COVID-19 has “accelerated the inevitable” and the future is now.
As accelerated underwriting (AU) and artificial intelligence (AI) begin to turn life underwriting upside down, several NAIC working groups are seeking to bring order to the disruption.
Life insurers need actionable responses to current underwriting challenges – including the need for fluidless Accelerated Underwriting alternatives, while striving to maintain the same level of mortality.