This groundbreaking partnership between Markel and Cytora, initiated in 2021, marks a pivotal moment in the insurance industry’s journey towards digital transformation.
Cytora’s innovative application of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionised Markel’s underwriting process, streamlining it into efficient digital workflows. Key components of this transformation include the automation of pre-underwriting tasks, meticulous upfront risk assessments, and the eradication of data rekeying.
This progressive approach has unlocked the potential to uncouple the relationship between growth and expense base, allowing Markel’s specialized underwriters to channel their efforts towards decision-ready risks with a high propensity for quoting and binding.
Aside from the substantial productivity surge, the partnership has also yielded a remarkable reduction in quote turnaround times for Markel’s strategic partners. Previously averaging one day, this timeframe has been slashed to a mere two hours, a testament to the partnership’s efficiency-enhancing impact.
Prior to joining forces with Cytora, Markel’s underwriters spent an estimated 30% of their time on low-skill, low-value tasks. Moreover, senior underwriters were burdened with the responsibility of manually assessing incoming submissions and routing them to the appropriate underwriter. This inefficiency not only hindered the allocation of more time to complex risks but also impeded the effective management of broker relationships.
Speaking about the partnership success, Neil Galjaard, Managing Director of Markel, said: “We are committed to giving brokers and clients enhanced service levels and Cytora has been a foundational partner helping us to effectively grow our scale and enable our underwriters to provide enhanced service to customers and brokers. We are now deepening our partnership with Cytora to build on the success we have achieved to date and are excited about creating further value for our brokers and clients in this next phase.”
Richard Hartley, CEO and Co-founder of Cytora, also commented: “Markel is a leading example of an insurer embracing the latest technology to revolutionise its business. We know that AI-driven Digital Risk Processing has the capacity to transform organisations by vastly improving efficiency and freeing employees up to do much higher value work.”
He added: Our partnership with Markel is a clear example of this in action – the productivity increases are significant. It underscores what can be achieved when insurers invest in digitising their underwriting workflows.”
Source: Cytora
