Blending Human Insight and AI to Improve Underwriting

October 23, 2025 / 2 min read

The past year may be remembered as a turning point for integrating generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into insurers’ underwriting workflows. A panel representing Verisk and Anthropic previewed the outlook for transformation as this technology moves from the fringes to the center of many carriers’ strategies, building on rapid progress achieved in 2025.

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In a webinar hosted by Insurtech NY, Saul Flores, vice president and head of product growth at Verisk, outlined some practical underwriting priorities industry leaders are learning to tackle with GenAI.

Individual underwriters spend much time compiling, connecting, and managing disparate data flows. The goal is for these knowledge workers to focus more on business development, relationship management, and preparing to face emerging risks and their implications.
Underwriting organizations struggle with time-consuming, error-prone manual processes and the high costs of these legacy workflows. The goals are to accelerate speed to market, sharpen accuracy, and implement new, more cost-efficient operating models.

Climbing the AI ladder

Insurers’ understanding and comfort level have evolved in recent years through different levels of AI, said Nicole Ricci, Verisk’s head of commercial GenAI Underwriting Assistant. The first level, “classic AI,” involves data sets and algorithms that behave consistently and predictably—a good fit for a closely regulated industry such as insurance. GenAI, however, looks for patterns and continually learns from them. Its outputs evolve, which calls for a thoughtful approach to discover the use cases that align with industry standards and best practices.

While the uncertainty of variable outputs carries potential risk, the creative aspect of GenAI brings flexibility that some insurers have used to place the technology in an advisory role, providing insights to supplement underwriters’ expertise and experience, said Ricci.

A step at a time

Vikash Kothari, a go-to-market specialist for financial services at Anthropic, suggested three steps an insurer could take toward making a substantial operational impact with GenAI:

Start small with functions such as document digitization and submission completeness to validate the power of GenAI tools. Some carriers have seen 30–50% time savings.
Add risk scoring and anomaly detection in financial data and risk characteristics.
Reach higher with portfolio analytics and strategic risk management, employing predictive modeling for loss forecasting and pricing.

The panelists stressed that a human in the loop will remain essential. GenAI tools act as trusted assistants to reliably perform tasks that would otherwise divert human expertise from high-value functions. GenAI can also take on more strategic advisory roles, but decisions remain in human hands.

View the full on-demand webinar for more insights, and explore the possibilities of Augmented Underwriting from Verisk.

View the full on-demand webinar for more insights

View webinar