4 Steps to Better Broker/Underwriter Workflows

Relationships are hard work. And without good communication, they become strained—regardless of the circumstances.

Broker and underwriter relationships are no different. Whether you’re a broker trying to build and maintain rapport with customers or an underwriter trying to assess submissions and determine acceptable risk, a shared understanding of each side's priorities, goals, and pain points is key for healthier relationships and faster processes.

That’s where insurance modernization can help. Thanks to the emergence of insurtech and the wave of solutions that have come since, there are more options available than ever before to improve some of the most painful insurance processes—including broker and underwriter workflows.

Underwriting workbenches have been getting major updates since their initial emergence in the 80s and 90s. Because underwriting is so complex, many insurers have focused their tech investments on underwriting but haven’t yet connected the dots for brokers. 

Without a connected solution in place for brokers to create and track submissions, communication between brokers and underwriters breaks down, leading to frustrating experiences for both and less visibility for customers.

Broker portals are an easy solution to this. They provide brokers with a unified place to submit, manage, and check the status of their existing submissions by connecting directly to existing underwriting solutions. This allows for easier data sharing and better collaboration between brokers and underwriters and ultimately streamlines the quote-to-bind process.

With the right solutions in place, you can vastly improve the experiences of brokers, underwriters, and customers. And you can more easily implement common best practices that make quote-to-bind processes more efficient.

1. Provide clear communication channels

This starts with understanding everyone’s role, needs, and points of view. Once you have a clear idea of what is needed, you can start to map out what channels and tools you want to use for better communication. Some tools can even provide you with AI summaries of conversations to help you get up to speed more quickly on submission status. 

2. Improve submission quality

There are some easy ways to improve the quality of submissions simply by the data you capture. Broker portals with customized fields and dashboards can help guide brokers through submissions, so they can more easily qualify new submissions and capture the information that underwriters need right from the start. 

3. Make data easy to access 

Data access is one of the biggest pain points for both brokers and underwriters. And providing data can be a pain for customers, too. To reduce the burden of tracking down data, look for technology providers that offer data fabric or other data management solutions that unify data from your key systems and communication channels.

4. Automate where possible

Reduced manual work, intelligent recommendations, elimination of tedious repetitive tasks—the benefits of automation are vast. But they need to be applied effectively to have the desired effect. By using tools that have embedded AI automation capabilities, you can significantly streamline key sticking points in your broker and underwriter workflows.

With Appian’s broker portal, brokers can create new submissions and check the status of existing submissions, view and track their assigned tasks, upload submission documents, and communicate with insurance carriers and underwriting teams.

Appian Connected Underwriting P&C Workbench ships with the broker portal module—so it’s seamlessly connected to your underwriting workbench to improve communication with underwriters and insurance carriers for faster quote-to-bind.

Here’s a look at some of the things you can do with the broker portal:

View, track, and exchange submissions

Give brokers a unified view of the information and tools they need to work more efficiently, including the ability to create new submissions, check the status of an existing submission, contact an insurer, track updates on recently modified submissions, and identify submissions that require attention.

Brokers can quickly drill down into submission details for a more complete look at customer information, tasks, and related documentation.

Manage communication across brokers, insurers, and internal teams

Brokers can compose, send, and track messages, keeping the lines of communication open between internal and external stakeholders. They can even use AI smart summaries on message threads to quickly catch up on important discussions.

Provide personalized broker experiences

The broker portal is designed with a modern and intuitive interface to simplify the broker journey—allowing them to instantly see relevant information right from the first page.