Colm Kennedy is helping life insurers automate and speed up underwriting processes.
Kennedy is executive vice president Americas at Munich Re Automation Solutions. Companies like Lincoln Financial turn to him for ideas about how to review coverage applications better.
Consumer group reps have been questioning whether the new accelerated underwriting systems are fair. Hank George, a veteran underwriting, has wondered whether the systems provide enough of the data that underwriters need to detect problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Related: Analysis COVID-19 and Fast Underwriting Are a Bad Mix: Veteran Underwriter)
Here are three things Kennedy said about efforts to automate life insurance underwriting, drawn from a recent email interview.
1. Life insurers like the automated systems they’ve already added.
Munich Re tends to focus on “augmented automated underwriting processes,” or systems that put automation in the service of a live-human underwriter.
Munich Re surveys its customers every quarter on a variety of subjects, and it uses those surveys to see how Munich Re technology is affecting its customers’ operations, Kennedy said.