Top 10 Reasons You Need An Underwriting Workstation

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TOP 10REASONSYOU NEED AN
UNDERWRITING
WO R K S TAT I O N
FOR P&C INSURANCE

2
#REASON LET YOUR UNDERWRITERS
UNDERWRITE
Property & Casualty insurers are increasingly focused on minimizing the
time that underwriters spend researching risk parameters and maximizing
the time they spend making underwriting decisions. In a recent FirstBest
study, 50 percent of the underwriters surveyed said they have to
access four or more systems during the underwriting process.
Underwriting workstations are designed to streamline the underwriting
process, integrating with data providers to gather and store the
information underwriters need to properly — and efficiently — qualify,
assess, and price risks.

3
#REASON
IMPROVE PROFITABILITY
& GROWTH
In a recent Accenture survey of more than 550 North American underwriters,
93 percent said that investment in technology is the best way to improve underwriting quality,
which is key to improving profitability.
P&C insurers invest in underwriting workstations to sustain and improve loss
ratios and to promote growth and efficiency across their product lines.

4
#REASON
ENSURE CONSISTENCY,
DISCIPLINE, AND
KNOWLEDGE SHARING
ACROSSTHE ENTERPRISE
Chief underwriting officers want consistency across underwriting
for best practices and regulatory compliance. Diverse underwriting
teams and the use of multiple systems to handle policy
administration, reporting, and other key underwriting tasks can
make it difficult to ensure consistent workflows. An underwriting
workstation can provide the structure and tools that are necessary
to enforce consistency across all your product lines.

5
#REASON
REDUCE TIME
TO MARKET
The speed at which you introduce new products has a direct impact on the
market share you capture. And your ability to enter new markets depends
on how quickly you can configure the underwriting capabilities of your policy
administration systems. Often, such configurations can be time consuming
and costly and they may require considerable IT effort. With an integrated
underwriting workstation, however, business analysts can rapidly modify key
underwriting elements in continuous support of your risk assessment and
risk appetite strategy — dramatically reducing the time and work involved in
introducing new products.

6
#REASON
ACCESS AN
UNDERWRITING
DATA REPOSITORY
In today’s data-driven risk management environment, an accessible underwriting data
repository is not a convenience; it’s a necessity. In fact, to be effective, your underwriters
must rely more on vast and diverse data elements than on any business process in the P&C
market segment. Modern underwriting workstations provide the necessary integration
points for data from agency, policy, and other systems to offer your underwriters access to
all the data elements they need for underwriting from one system.

7
#REASON
INTEGRATE ANALYTICS
FOR INFORMED RISK SELECTION,
PRECISION PRICING,AND
OPERATIONALVISIBILITY
The proliferation of big data offers you the opportunity
to leverage predictive analytics in the underwriting
process for more precision in risk assessment and
pricing. A data-driven underwriting workstation
provides the capabilities not only to capture valuable
structured and unstructured risk data, but also to
quickly operationalize data and analytics for better
underwriting results.

8
#REASON
IMPROVE
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
AND EASE OF USE
FOR AGENTSAND BROKERS
Agents and brokers look for the path of least resistance to win business and serve
policyholders. They want to use systems that enable them to submit business as quickly
and easily as possible. Their requirements may vary widely, depending on the complexity of
the lines of business for which they want coverage and whether their agency has
underwriting authority. With an effective underwriting workstation, your organization can
provide agents and brokers with exactly the access they need, based on their specific lines
and underwriting authority. It’s really quite simple: when you provide a comprehensive
agent portal (with mobile capabilities) from a single underwriting workstation, your agents
will immediately recognize the benefits over systems that do not offer them an efficient
way to submit business.

9
#REASON
LEVERAGE
PROFICIENT UNDERWRITING
IN NEW PORTFOLIOS AND
ADDITIONAL LOBS
When you acquire a book of business or an entirely new operation, you may
also inherit an additional policy administration system. Whether the new
policies are migrated into your existing policy administration system, or the
acquired system is integrated into your organization, you can eliminate
underwriting inefficiencies by using an underwriting workstation that integrates
with all your policy administration systems.

10
#REASON
EXTEND
THE LIFE AND FUNCTIONALITY
OF YOUR
POLICY ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM
Like any core insurance application, migrating to a new policy
administration system can be a time-consuming and expensive effort. It is
well documented that the timeline for deciding to purchase a new policy
administration and going into production with a new system is measured
in years, not months.
By design, underwriting workstations can quickly and efficiently extend
the value and functionality of your policy administration investment

11
#REASON
SUPPORT REGULATORY
COMPLIANCE
To ensure regulatory compliance, you must implement internal audits and procedural controls
for the activities and records of your agents and your underwriting, claims, and complaints
departments, as well as your company’s data assets and processes. Not only must you avoid the
business and reputational risk of noncompliance with existing laws and regulations, but you
must also be vigilant on ever-changing and -growing requirements that can affect both front-
and back-office operations. With a dedicated, highly configurable, and flexible underwriting
workstation, you can anticipate and address regulatory issues in real time, thereby avoiding
downstream consequences or penalties for noncompliance.

12
RECAP
LETYOUR
UNDERWRITERS UNDERWRITE
1
3
ENSURE CONSISTENCY,
DISCIPLINE, AND KNOWLEDGE
SHARING ACROSSTHE ENTERPRISE
2
IMPROVE
PROFITABILITY
& GROWTH
4REDUCE
TIMETO MARKET
5
ACCESS AN
UNDERWRITING
DATA REPOSITORY
6
INTEGRATE ANALYTICS FOR
INFORMED RISK SELECTION,
PRECISION PRICING, AND
OPERATIONALVISIBILITY
7
IMPROVETHE CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE AND EASE OF
USE FOR AGENTS AND
BROKERS
8
LEVERAGE PROFICIENT
UNDERWRITING IN NEW PORTFOLIOS
AND ADDITIONAL LOBS
EXTENDTHE LIFE AND
FUNCTIONALITY OFYOUR POLICY
ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM9
10SUPPORT REGULATORY
COMPLIANCE

13
UNDERWRITING WORKSTATION
A central workspace… Separate from broader policy administration functionality…
Equips the underwriter and key stakeholders to perform the underwriting process more
collaboratively, efficiently, and consistently and arrive at a more accurate pricing of risk.
Collaboration between underwriter, agents/brokers, and
other external and internal parties
Embedded analytics and data services
Common set of calculation/underwriting tools
Improved business process management (BPM) capabilities,
enhanced workflow, and rules management
Configuration tools (including configuration of datasets,
rules, checklists, and forms)
Underwriting management tools, underwriting
performance tracking, and reporting
Audit trail
Skills-based routing for underwriting assignments

ABOUT FIRSTBEST
FirstBest is the #1 provider of
underwriting workstations for property
& casualty insurance companies.
Built by underwriters for underwriters,
the award-winning technology of
FirstBest uniquely delivers speed,
collaboration, and data-powered
decisions.
With FirstBest solutions, commercial,
specialty, and workers’ compensation
insurers make better underwriting
decisions that rapidly grow their
business.
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