Kathmandu. Insurance companies globally are rapidly automating their underwriting departments to protect margins from increased competition and a soft market. Currently, 2 out of 5 insurance companies in the world are using artificial intelligence (AI).
This is the discovery of a new global study by Solars Consulting. “AI is being used in underwriting operations of insurance companies,” the study report said, adding that digital adoption is driving investment in underwriting departments, which are already behind claims and distributions. ’
This automation effort is completely transforming corporate recruitment and workforce structures. The demand for technology professionals with specialized underwriting expertise has grown exponentially over the past year. By 2025, the share of IT job opportunities requiring underwriting knowledge has doubled.
The technological transformation of the beam industry is clearly visible in the business lines. Currently, 20 percent of commercial insurance companies use AI platforms to auto-sort incoming business submissions and extract the necessary data from unstructured multi-format documents.
The researchers identified 126 active insurance AI use cases in 10 major markets around the world. Of those, 13 operated exclusively within the underwriting unit.
Industry analysts expect the technology to transform day-to-day risk management and internal operations over the next 12 to 24 months. While AI currently handles the initial sorting of submissions and document processing, insurance companies are working to integrate these tools directly into core pricing models and digital workspaces.
To avoid disruptions in core risk selection in the short term, companies are using AI to analyze existing portfolios and review complex contract terms in real-time. Which frees up manual capacity for human underwriters. The regional outlook for this technology rollout varies across major financial centers.
Australian insurers are taking advantage of a recent wave of corporate mergers to modernise their outdated systems. At least one major carrier is now fully digitising its commercial underwriting unit.
In the London market, insurance companies are actively retiring spreadsheet-based workflows in favour of flexible pricing platforms. Which connect directly to their core underwriting engines. North American insurance firms are augmenting their existing personal lines of AI tools for complex, large-scale business risks.
In France, the large UK market and the Nordic countries, companies are prioritizing data integration and software interoperability to build the technical foundation needed for automated workflows.
Especially in Poland and Central Europe, using optical character recognition to automate document processing and prescreen new risks, insurance companies are moving from the initial testing phase to full direct production faster than in other regions. –Agency
