Insurance carriers’ underwriting departments have been slow to adopt technology. And a newly completed study conducted by Accenture working with the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters Society (CPCU) has found that where underwriting departments have deployed new systems, the technology often creates more work, because only point solutions are available.

One of the problems, said Gail McGiffin, a senior executive at Accenture, is that underwriting departments don’t realize how much technology could improve their operations if it were deployed within a comprehensive architecture. That’s in part because vendors have targeted specific areas of underwriting, such as document management or decision support, and no one has created a comprehensive solution, the study suggests.

“People have one piece over here, and another piece over there, but then they are forced to navigate among these different solutions,” said McGiffin. “Technology is enabling discreet processes in an unconnected manner. This has created a burden and is the reason the technology impact hasn’t been better.”

Underwriting organizations need to see technology in an integrated business framework, but because no single vendor provides a broad solution, the potential buyers just see a confusing array of point solutions.

Accenture, which plans to help carriers develop an architecture for underwriting, found that carriers were enthusiastic when shown the potential of new technology. In the survey, carriers were questioned about existing practices and then shown some graphical representations of what technology could do.

Most firms initially said they were pleased with their workflow and risk selection, explained McGiffin.

“But in all cases when we took them into the survey section to show them a visualization of how workflow automation and decision automation could better assist them and handle exceptions better, all of them said that would have a high impact,” McGiffin said. The industry needs an integrated business architecture that it can use to plug point systems into a solution, according to McGiffin, who has been talking with Microsoft’s Dennis Maroney, worldwide insurance industry manager, about how the Insurance Value Chain might be applied to this challenge.

“It is important to have a good demonstration that visually shows a more cohesive environment and how it can change the user experience,” McGiffin said.

To receive a copy of the report, contact Taria Avery of Accenture at taria.avery@accenture.com