Mastering the Matrix
March 26, 2024
Finally, it’s happening: after years of discussion that started with big data, moved on to multi-disciplinary teams and most recently arrived at Gen AI, London Market, specialty and reinsurance underwriting is changing. Over the last decade, leading insurers and brokers have invested in technological foundations that are now allowing them to build enhanced data, analytics, automation and digital capabilities. These capabilities span the whole underwriting journey from data ingestion to intelligent triage, risk analysis and beyond.
Depending on their area of focus, insurers are pushing for fully automated underwriting journeys, “bionic” underwriting or tactical process automation. AI, and Gen AI in particular, could deliver a step-change in insurers’ underwriting and processing capabilities.
This raises important questions about the role of the underwriter and the composition of underwriting teams in the future. We believe that the role of the underwriter at industry-leading companies could be substantially different by the end of the decade. However many carriers have barely started to think about the end-to-end strategic implications of underwriting transformation on their business model and talent pool.
In this article we consider how insurers can use four steps to build a skills matrix fit for the future:
1. Understanding the strategic context
2. Identifying the underwriting capabilities that matter
3. Determining team construction
4. Turning theory into reality: The Oxbow Partners underwriting skills framework
Click here to download the full paper
About the author
Max Deacon is a Principal at Oxbow Partners, specialising in strategy and transformation across the specialty insurance and reinsurance sector.
