Insurers are expanding their digital capabilities, but many have yet to see these investments translate into more agile decision-making across their businesses.
At a recent Insurtech Insights webinar on building the agile ins urance enterprise, Earnix vice president of global solutions Drew Lawyer joined Bupa head of strategy Roddy Barnes and Prudential engineering leader Rohan Rayarikar to discuss why greater agility requires more than new technology.
For Earnix, the discussion reflects a fundamental challenge facing the insurance industry: connecting data, systems and workflows to improve decisions across pricing, underwriting and customer engagement. Although insurers are investing heavily in digital capabilities, the real value lies in translating those investments into better risk assessment, stronger margins and improved customer outcomes.
Rayarikar argued that the sector’s central problem is not a shortage of technology, but an inability to make decisions efficiently across complex operations. Historically, technology has often been introduced as a standalone capability rather than integrated into the processes that shape customer experiences.
Prudential’s Rayarikar described the traditional approach as, “here is a system, here is technology that can help your life.” He advocated a more connected model in which customer context follows the entire journey, from initial engagement through underwriting and pricing. This would reduce the need for customers and advisers to repeatedly provide information as they move between different systems and stages.
The challenge becomes more pronounced at scale. Prudential’s field force comprises more than 90,000 financial professionals, making it difficult to ensure every adviser has access to the right information when a decision is required. Addressing this requires data, intelligence and workflows to operate together around the decision itself, rather than relying on disconnected dashboards and applications.
Lawyer offered another perspective on improving decision-making, drawing on his experience working within an insurance carrier. He suggested imagining what would happen if every underwriting rule were removed overnight. If market pricing accurately reflects risk, he argued, underwriting could be viewed less as a binary decision about whether to accept an applicant and more as an assessment of confidence that the proposed price is appropriate.
For example, a married couple insuring two Toyota Corollas might represent a straightforward case requiring little human intervention. An 18-year-old seeking cover for three Ferraris, by contrast, would warrant additional scrutiny. This approach positions underwriting as a source of intelligence that can inform pricing, customer engagement and next-best-action recommendations, helping insurers respond more effectively to individual circumstances.
However, technology alone cannot deliver this transformation. Barnes cautioned that technological progress does not automatically translate into operational improvements. Reflecting on cloud adoption, Bupa’s Barnes described it as an “unlock that moves the bottleneck”, highlighting how resolving one technical constraint can expose deeper organisational challenges.
For insurers, these challenges include redesigning processes, establishing clear accountability and ensuring teams can work effectively across traditional business boundaries. Connecting pricing, underwriting and customer engagement also raises questions about decision ownership when multiple functions influence the same customer interaction. Without clear governance, integrating systems risks transferring existing inefficiencies into a more sophisticated digital environment.
Earnix’s AIOS platform is designed to bring data, models, AI and workflows together across pricing, underwriting and customer engagement. The broader lesson from the discussion is that competitive advantage will depend less on the number of technologies insurers adopt and more on how effectively they turn intelligence into action. By connecting decision-making processes while preserving appropriate governance and human judgement, insurers can build more responsive operations and realise greater value from their technology investments.
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