The latest research from Sollers Consulting;
The global insurance industry is entering a pivotal phase in the digitalisation of underwriting, driven by intensifying competitive pressures, a softening market and rapid advances in artificial intelligence. According to new research by Sollers Consulting, four in ten insurers are now using AI in underwriting.
The automation of underwriting is rapidly becoming a strategic priority for insurers across all major markets. This shift marks a turning point for a function that has lagged claims management and distribution in terms of digitalisation. It is already reshaping the industry’s workforce. The share of IT roles in insurance requiring underwriting expertise doubled in 2025 and is growing faster than any other specialisation.
A Sollers survey across ten markets identifies 126 active AI use cases in insurance, 13 of which are directly attributable to underwriting. While this number remains small compared with the claims function, growth is steep. The most visible progress to date has been in commercial insurance. Here, 20% of insurers are already using AI to triage incoming submissions and extract data from unstructured documents.
“Underwriting was the last major function to be digitised, and the pace is now changing rapidly,” says Jakub Śliwiński, Head of Underwriting at Sollers. “We are already seeing AI support triage submissions and help underwriters generate quotes more quickly and consistently in standardised lines. Extending this to more complex, lower-volume risks will take another one to two years, as the necessary data foundations first need to be put in place.”
Global markets drive the shift towards underwriting technology
The impact of AI on underwriting remains uneven for now. It is primarily concentrated in the intake of submissions and document processing, with less influence so far on pricing and risk selection. This balance is likely to shift as insurers expand their digitalisation initiatives and introduce underwriting workbenches that more tightly integrate pricing models and user interfaces. Scaling AI beyond submission intake, however, requires a fundamental redesign of IT and business architectures, as well as careful change management, as AI becomes increasingly embedded in underwriters’ day-to-day work.
A sensible short-term focus is on aggregation and portfolio analysis. Gaining near real-time visibility of portfolios with numerous bespoke contract terms is a challenge that AI is well placed to address. This is becoming increasingly relevant for regulators and at the same time frees up capacity for underwriters without altering core risk selection.
As the adoption of underwriting technology accelerates, regional differences are emerging:
- The London market has established itself as a global front runner: insurers are moving away from spreadsheet-based processes and adopting flexible pricing platforms directly integrated into underwriting systems.
- In Australia, a wave of mergers and acquisitions has put the modernisation of pricing and underwriting on the agenda, with at least one major insurer beginning to fully digitise its commercial underwriting.
- North American insurers are increasingly extending the use of AI from personal lines to complex commercial risks.
- Across the wider UK personal and commercial market, as well as in France and the Nordic countries, the focus is on data integration and interoperability – the foundations that enable automation in the first place.
- Poland and the wider Central and Eastern Europe region are moving fastest from pilot stage to production readiness, particularly in OCR-driven document processing and automated pre-screening in underwriting.
Further details can be found in the article “Underwriting transformation: there is no silver bullet – only good decisions” by Jakub Śliwiński:
https://sollers.com/en/insights/success-factors-in-digital-underwriting/
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