Underwriters spend more time searching for data than assessing risk. The bottleneck is not expert judgement, it is information access.

The quote-to-bind ratio is 5:1 to 10:1, wasting capacity. Different underwriters price the same risk with 15-25 per cent variance. Broker submissions arrive as 10-20 page PDFs with information scattered across attachments. The most experienced underwriter takes 2-3 hours to evaluate a complex SME submission. With 23 submissions queued and the senior underwriter on leave, broker pressure for a fast response builds.

McKinsey 2024, WTW Advanced Analytics Survey 2026