The Industry Landscape
Unlocking Speed and Scale in Commercial Underwriting
Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers face persistent friction in commercial underwriting. Manual document intake, disconnected tools and data silos slow down the submission process and quote generation, increasing lead time and underwriting expenses. These issues are especially prominent in carriers created through acquisitions, where federated entities operate on distinct systems and workflows.
As insurers seek to accelerate submission-to-quote turnaround and improve broker satisfaction, the strategic focus shifts away from replacing legacy systems to enabling data-first automation layers that streamline intake, triage and routing.
The Client Challenge
Document-heavy New Business Submissions | Fragmented Workflows
The client operated a complex, multi-entity underwriting environment spanning commercial and specialty lines. As New Business submission volumes surged, underwriters struggled to process document-intensive applications while consistently meeting speed, accuracy and Service-level Agreement (SLA) requirements.
Key challenges included:
With increasing underwriting workload and the growing demand for digital-first service, the client prioritized a scalable automation layer to standardize and accelerate submission intake, minimize manual document processing and re-keying, and relieve workflow bottlenecks, without a disruptive overhaul of core systems of record.
The Solution
Business Process Re-engineering | AI-led Intake Orchestration | SLA-driven Automation
WNS delivered a consultative, digital transformation program, combining strategic advisory, intelligent automation and AI-led intake. The engagement was anchored on two core pillars:
1. Consulting-led Process Re-design and Transformation
Utilizing our proprietary ADAPT framework, WNS systematically mapped the end-to-end New Business process and developed a comprehensive transformation roadmap that:
- Evaluated New Business submission intake effectiveness across entry channels by assessing data completeness, document variability and upfront triage, identifying first‑touch breakdowns slowing underwriting decisions.
- Identified high‑impact digitization, automation and orchestration opportunities to remove manual submission handling, improve underwriting decision quality at intake and enable a scalable New Business underwriting model.
The strategic assessment helped re‑imagine the end‑to‑end New Business underwriting model by positioning data digitization as the core enabler, complemented by targeted business process re-engineering and AI‑led intake.
2. AI-powered Document Intake with Hyperscience
To modernize New Business workflows, WNS deployed Hyperscience, an AI / ML-led document processing platform, as the document-to-data platform:
- Reviewed 150 products, including their application forms and supporting documents, to assess template variations.
- Assessed various fields within application forms, such as handwritten entries, checkboxes, signature spaces, multiline and free-form text, SSN, dates and alphanumeric data, to evaluate the complexity involved in extracting information.
- Completed a Proof of Concept (POC) for high-volume, top-tier products to validate data extraction accuracy and performance with Hyperscience.
- Developed ~1,605 variants of application forms, including structured, semi-structured and handwritten formats, as well as e-mail-based submissions.
- Ingested, classified And auto-split submission packets, including ACORD forms, supplemental forms, loss runs and schedules.
- Enabled human-in-the-loop exception handling for low-confidence fields, ensuring control and auditability.
- Applied SLA-targeted automation, dynamically balancing speed and accuracy based on field-level thresholds.
- Integrated structured, validated data via application programming interfaces directly into Salesforce and downstream operational systems, preserving existing systems of record.
This enabled STP for clean submissions and exception routing for low-confidence fields.
The Outcome
Useable Data | Faster Quotes | | Future-ready Commercial Underwriting
The transformation delivered measurable impact across underwriting operations and positioned the client for long-term digital success.
Key outcomes included: