The Challenge
Establishing domain-centric and technically superior underwriting and business insight services across multiple languages
This American Bermuda-based insurer and reinsurer writes specialty lines insurance covering difficult and unusual risks, reinsurance, and mortgage insurance worldwide, including US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Hong Kong.
And they were experiencing quick growth.
This meant that sourcing high-quality underwriting talent worldwide at the same rate as their growth was becoming a struggle. Especially when considering the dual challenges of meeting the speed and quality expectations of demanding brokers.
The increasing complexity of their portfolio led to a large amount of data that could be leveraged to their advantage – but required an investment in modern data warehousing and analytics tools.
The insurer wanted to pivot to an operating model that would address their scalability, cost, and technical expertise. They needed a trusted partner to evolve with them as they addressed a niche market segment and competed with large commercial carriers to capture new business and deliver a top-notch broker experience.
The Outcome
A hybrid delivery model across multiple geographies, enabling access to top-class underwriting and data services talent.
Through a partnership lasting a decade and counting, Sutherland setup Underwriting Centers of Excellence to provide support across specialty business worldwide, supporting over $100m GWP of underwriting for the London and Copenhagen branches alone. This included handling a complex setup of Statement of Values with as many as 500 to 1000 locations.
Sutherland Connect, a cloud-based omni-channel telephony platform was implemented to support customer interactions, allowing the insurer to handle a larger volume of calls, email channels, chat and SMS, therefore boosting contact rate.
We made investments in self-help knowledge repositories and a robust training program, combined with extensive expertise in property and casualty insurance domains, regional dynamics, and specialized underwriting techniques. As a result, we achieved a 20% reduction in handling time. This evolved into a strong process and output quality assurance framework that enabled us to deliver noise-free operations, with quality score guidelines of 98%+ accuracy in underwriting tasks.
Alongside this, Sutherland also established a Data-Ops and Analytics Center of Excellence that built a wide array of financial/non-financial reports and dashboards using Power BI, Snowflake, and proprietary tools. This empowered the insurer with better data-led decision-making and actionable insights.
