8 expert tips for creating maximum efficiency in your underwriting workflow. Keep your underwriters focused on what they do best - evaluating risk and writing business.

1. WAYS TO IMPROVE
UNDERWRITING WORKFLOW
And increase your
underwriting efficiency
TOP
8

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Due to processing inefficiencies, underwriters spend more
time on tasks unrelated to underwriting
than on actually evaluating and pricing risks.
Significant amounts of business may never get processed,
leading to lost deals, dissatisfied producers and unhappy
policyholders.
In an industry where there’s no time to lose, how can
insurers adapt and innovate to close the efficiency
gap and optimize underwriting workflows?
(Source: Underwriting Efficiency Survey)
The majority of underwriters
spend less than 50%
of their time
actually underwriting

3. © 2016 FirstBest Systems, Inc.3
01Submission Optimization
Appetite Alerts
Receive automatic alerts when incoming business does not
meet your appetite profile.
Prequalification
Streamline eligible submissions with automatic
pre-qualification requirements.
Auto-Declination
Automatically decline submissions not meeting
designated criteria, and notify producers in real time
via configurable letter templates.
Clearance
Automate the search for possible matching submissions and set
status to clear or flag for action. Notify producers of the status.
Goal
Expedite qualified risks to
underwriting, weed out
ineligible submissions,
and maintain timely
communication with
producers.
Strategy
Save time by refining
submissions in their earliest
stages.
Assignment
Execute automatic assignment of submissions.

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Submission Triage02
Apply underwriting consistency across the organization
by centralizing all supporting documentation and
risk evaluations in an electronic file.
Identify “next action” tasks and enable prompts to
take action.
Implement consistent and automated rules-based
risk analysis.
To support the underwriting analysis, direct the
underwriter and provide access to both internal and
external data sources.
Goal
Enable underwriters to make
the best decisions in the least
amount of time.
Strategy
By effectively prioritizing and
assigning submissions, you can
scale your underwriting
capacity to write more, better
quality business without
additional underwriting
resources.
4 Productive approaches for your triage model:

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03Enhance Collaboration
and Communication
Communication Tools
Collaborate within your underwriting teams, with peers, and
with producers to expedite information exchange and speed
decision‐making using email, live chat screen sharing,
attachment sharing, and agent/broker portals.
Agent/Broker Portals
Provide a portal so your producers can expedite the submission
process with easier upload and/or entry, appetite alerts,
pre‐clearance, online receipt, review of quotes and binders,
and visibility into their books of business.
Insurer Perspective
Collaboration tools we use are underwriting system-
based email capabilities that automatically get recorded
and attached to files, real time online chat with agents,
and private or shared notes. These system-based tools streamline our
process and significantly improve our communication with agents.”
- Senior Underwriter, Commercial Insurance Company
Goal
Enable enhanced
communication channels
between underwriters and
internal/external parties.
Strategy
Improve both profitability and
operational efficiencies by
promoting collaboration
between underwriters and
producers, as well as for
underwriters and their
internal team.

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04Leverage Real-Time Data
and Analytics
Goal
Quickly and easily validate
information, support decision
making, and increase accuracy
and consistency.
Strategy
Fully utilize analytics to gain
new and timely insights on
producer efficiency, products,
risk evaluation consistency,
and underwriting operations.
Streamline data collection with:
› Preloaded data
› Prebuilt connectors to third‐party data services
› Integrated pricing, analytics, and catastrophe modeling tools
Insurer Perspective
Not incorporating data in the area of risk
evaluation is truly a competitive disadvantage.
That’s because you can be much more accurate
when you are using data sources, compared to the past when
underwriters relied on instinct. We want to apply more science
to the art of underwriting so we are much more accurate in our
risk evaluation results.”
- Senior Vice President of Workers' Compensation,
A Leading National Insurance Carrier

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05Increase Book of Business
Visibility
Goal
Enable your underwriters to
view portfolio performance
and their work queue.
Strategy
Visibility helps underwriters
manage their time so they
can focus on the highest
priority risks -- with the
highest target profit margin
-- to maximize hit ratios.
Increase underwriter visibility by:
› Using risk attributes and scoring to prioritize submissions
› Clearly defining submission status
› Tracking other products written for the same account
Increased transparency provides underwriters the ability
to see book performance within the context of accounts
and workload, to make sure prioritization and efforts are
on track with company goals.

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Referral Management
06
Automate the underwriters’ letter of authority to
ensure compliance.
Enable referral of electronic submission files to
other users at any point in the workflow.
Enable on-line review of referrals.
Automate referrals to designated individuals
based on the risk characteristics.
Record referral and approval/rejection commentary for
file documentation.
Goal
Streamline referral
processing based on
multiple levels of
underwriting authorities
and lines of business.
Strategy
Manage underwriting
referrals at any point in
the workflow with full
visibility into the file
documentation.
5 Dynamic approaches for your referral strategy
Referral Management

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07Automate!
Goal
Reverse the trend of expenses impacting profits due to
valuable time lost on evaluating ineligible or low
margin risks.
Strategy
Responsive technology can help manage those costly
risks with straight-through-processing, freeing up
underwriters to focus on the risks with the highest
target profit margins.
Straight-through-processing provides the ability for
automated, rules-driven clearance, quoting, binding,
declination, referral and more.
According to Strategy Meets
Action, commercial insurers
need to embrace underwriting
automation:
Carriers are
realizing more and
more how to use
automation to make it easier
for underwriters to assess
risk, facilitate information
gathering, and make the
decision process more
accurate and consistent.”

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08Invest in Underwriting
Technology
The modern underwriting workstation is
a critical and essential component of
insurers’ business and technology
environments. The primary uses are risk
analysis/pricing capabilities, documentation
trails, advanced underwriting rules, straight-
through processing for submission management,
quick quotes, and automated underwriting
workflows, as well as bringing in new sources of
data, models, and analytics.”
- Source: The New Age of Underwriting, Strategy Meets Action
Goal
Transform your underwriting
workflows and achieve new
levels of profitability and
growth.
Strategy
Implement a modern
underwriting workstation --
designed to fully leverage
your risk appetite and the
talents of your underwriters.
Evaluate state-of-the-art
underwriting technology to
improve the full risk analysis
process, all from one system.

11. © 2016 FirstBest Systems, Inc.
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