5 key challenges facing underwriters today 

Underwriting is burdensome. Underwriters have always been forced to rely on manual processes across legacy systems. The latter — often disconnected. Working with siloed data in multiple systems usually leads to errors, slow quote processing time, and lack of analytics.  

What if you heard that underwriting could be easy? Working on risk selection using innovative software will no longer be a mess. 

Let’s see what problems underwriters face most often nowadays.  

Challenge 1 – Manual processes

According to McKinsey, underwriters spend 30-40% of their time doing operational tasks, mainly manually. That’s why new technology and digitalization have become a necessity. Implementing advanced tools can help increase productivity and reduce the costs spent on administrative tasks.  

Replacing manual repetitive jobs with completely digital workflows can help underwriters automate many processes like doing analyses, identifying risks, extracting required customer data, and many more.  

Challenge 2 – Siloed data

Using dozens of sources to intake submissions, underwriters get tired of cleaning up and processing large amounts of data. Sometimes, they even have to clarify some things with customers, which takes time and additional effort.   

High-quality data is key to accurate underwriting. Why?  

Firstly, access to high-quality data helps underwriters to more effectively collaborate with brokers on better terms and pricing. Secondly, with clear data, underwriters can enable data-driven risk selection. Thirdly, underwriters can identify new risks early to adjust pricing and coverage accordingly. 

Modern digital platforms help underwriters address the challenge of siloed data by structuring submissions from diverse data sources with the help of artificial intelligence. It converts messy submissions into structured, clear, and high-quality data.  

Challenge 3 – Low customer satisfaction

Customer dissatisfaction with their underwriting experience is often caused by delays and lack of clarity. Because of slow turnaround times customers can lose their interest in policy or feel frustrated waiting too long for the decision. Also, customers may not understand why they are requested to provide additional information or why they are priced higher than expected.   

Today, insurers put technology first to enhance customer experience as legacy manual underwriting processes lead to customer dissatisfaction. New technology solutions should provide a fully digital customer experience with clear procedures and transparent underwriting decisions. 

Challenge 4 – Underwriting platform lacking the required capabilities

With a great variety of software solutions for the insurance industry, underwriters are often unsatisfied with these systems. That’s because most underwriting platforms lack functionalities needed to ensure effective risk selection: rate, price, and quote automation, easy submission intake, clash check and risk overlapping, etc.    

The growing need for innovative underwriting systems powered by AI facilitates digital transformation in the insurance industry. However, finding the right solution may seem too complicated and building a custom one – too expensive. 

Adopting a ready-made configurable platform may be a solution. For example, our Underwriting Workbench has prebuilt industry workflows, including automated submissions intake, document processing, risk scoring, etc. It can be integrated with other systems, tools, and data sources your organization needs for effective work.  

The advantage of a ready-made software solution is that it ensures faster time to value. It can be implemented quicker than it takes to develop a custom software product, allowing insurance companies to modernize their IT landscape faster and more effectively.    

Challenge 5 – Assessing risks

Evaluating complex risks is challenging because of the variety of factors that vary from one business line to another. For example, in health insurance, underwriters consider medical history, age, gender, occupation, lifestyle habits, etc., while auto insurance, it’s driving history, vehicle type, location, vehicle safety, and other factors.  

Traditionally, to accurately assess all risks, underwriters use manual rule-based processes that rely on various questionnaires, historical data, and human judgement. They have to do lots of manual jobs like reviewing applications, checking applicants’ risk factors according to pre-defined criteria, matching customer profiles with the help of manual rating guides and actuarial tables, and many others.    

Underwriting Workbench can speed up the assessment of risks by extracting and structuring data from emails and various documents with the help of natural language processing. It can also help eliminate manual data entry and save time for underwriters. Besides, this platform has in-built AI decision support to assist in risk evaluation, anomaly detection, and pricing recommendations.  

One dashboard for customer overview also adds value to underwriters as it gathers all information about the customer in one place: policy history, broker interaction, claims data, etc. It also helps in assessing risks as the dashboard shows hidden correlations and coverage gaps.  

Conclusion

Insurance underwriters today face a perfect storm of challenges: manual workflows, fragmented data, unsatisfied customers, outdated tools, and increasingly complex risk environments. These issues don’t just slow down operations—they impact profitability, accuracy, and competitiveness. 

But with the right technology, underwriting doesn’t have to be a burden. An AI-powered Underwriting Workbench can transform the process—automating repetitive tasks, integrating scattered data, enhancing customer experience, and supporting smarter, faster risk assessment. 

It’s time to leave behind the inefficiencies of the past and embrace intelligent, future-ready underwriting.