Watch: Using data to improve underwriting and tackle underinsurance

In the last 12 months, we’ve been accelerating investment across our business to better support you. This means strengthening our service, enhancing underwriting capability and expanding our capacity.

A big part of this has been looking at how we use data and automation to empower our underwriters, providing you with a more personalised and data-driven service. This has included identifying gaps in cover and underinsurance exposures, whilst automating simple tasks to make sure your time with an underwriter is best utilised.

Find out how this is helping you

Recently, Jason Chambers, Aviva’s head of underwriting automation, sat down for an interview with Insure TV. He discussed the work Aviva are doing, how this is helping you and your clients and what you can expect from Aviva moving forward.

Read the video transcript
 

Don’t have time to watch the full 9-minute video today? Here’s some highlights:

On supporting underwriter-broker conversations

• “[client] needs are changing and it’s much harder to keep track of some of the issues that they’re facing. Anything that enables our underwriters to understand more about the customer, where we can put that information directly into the broker’s hands, to have a deep rich conversation that’s relevant to the customer [is] an area that we’re looking at.”

On removing simple tasks from an underwriter’s to-do list

• “There’s many simple tasks that our underwriters take, [but] we want to amplify their capabilities for them to become the best underwriters [they can be], taking them into almost a bionic capability that elevates their thinking so they can spend more time helping with more difficult issues that the brokers and our customers are facing.”

On Jason’s decision to move from underwriting into automation

• “I thought there was an opportunity to, to some degree, dismantle and/or simplify some of the complexities that I instituted into my previous role. I am able to have some quite healthy debates with my colleagues about how we can remove some of the friction and pain, whether that be endorsements or questions, or how we develop policy wordings, which can run into hundreds of pages. There’s an opportunity, a need, to simplify insurance alongside taking advantage of data and technology.”

On using data to enhance the service a broker provides

• “On the back of digital businesses, we are seeing a greater opportunity to have more access to data in real time. And with that data there’s a significant opportunity to transform insurance and to support brokers, [developing] their capability to be a digital broker of the future, a more trusted risk adviser that can take advantage of some of insights that can be generated.”

On Aviva becoming an automated business

• “We are a people business, we will always be a people business, and our people are our biggest asset. It’s how we take the information to make them the best version of themselves, and that’s what we’re focusing on.”