The Bowhead story: building a digital-first specialty provider from the ground up

Insurers and underwriters face increasing pressure to deliver more value to their policyholders, improve the customer experience, and reduce costs. They are therefore turning to technology to automate, streamline and to optimise their operations. Among other benefits, technology allows insurers to bring administrative work out of silos and into one solution. This enables, for example, underwriters to view and track work through its entire lifecycle.

In one such example, insurtech software company Send, announced a partnership with its first US customer—Bowhead Specialty Underwriters—in January 2022 to streamline their underwriting process.

The Send Underwriting Workbench was deployed to deliver a comprehensive view of an underwriter’s inventory, a single customer view that integrates complex and disparate data sources, and it was built to fully utilize Send’s Pricing solution. Its AI-enabled platform delivers deep insight into how Bowhead’s business operates, providing them not only with peace of mind that their regulatory requirements are covered, but also commercial confidence to support their ambitious growth strategy in the E&S market, according to Ben Huckel, co-founder and chief executive officer of Send.

As a rapidly growing underwriter, Bowhead specialises in providing professional liability, management liability, healthcare liability and casualty coverages. Its focus is on having a digital-first approach to underwriting.

“We needed a partner with technology built for the specialty sector to enable our growth and differentiation,” said Stephen Sills, chief executive officer of Bowhead, “so we went with Send.”

He affirmed confidence in the Send Underwriting Workbench solution, arguing that it will enable his firm to achieve all its goals and objectives as proven by a successful testing and implementation phase.

Sills’ colleagues, chief information officer, Bob Spina and chief operating officer, Brandon Mezick of Bowhead Specialty Underwriters joined Intelligent Insurer for an interview ahead of Spina’s virtual presentation titled “ Building A Digital-First Specialty Provider From The Ground Up” on Day 2 of Commercial Lines Innovation USA on May 10, 2022, to reveal more about how the technology improves underwriting.

What were the catalysts for Bowhead’s journey to build a data-driven specialty insurer?

Founded in 2020—during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—Bowhead Specialty Underwriters chose to be a cloud-enabled, data-first company. While many legacy insurers are still in the process of digital transformation, Bowhead Specialty had a greenfield opportunity to build a digital company from the start. Our data-first approach gives Bowhead Specialty an edge in the market, allows for greater employee efficiency, better underwriting, and a better broker experience.

Our desire to rapidly create and deliver market leading products requires it. We view our technology strategy as part of our success in launching three divisions with 40 marketable products within a year.

How did Bowhead deploy the essential ingredients for success, and what are they?

From the outset, recruiting a team with the right mindset was key when building Bowhead Specialty. We sought individuals who were unsatisfied with conventional business practices, motivated by change and the opportunities presented by technology, and who could think beyond a single product or department.

Bowhead Specialty is passionate about tightly integrating teams, from underwriting to claims, IT, operations and finance, to develop products and systems in an agile manner. And by partnering so closely, underwriting better understood the possibilities that come with a digital-first foundation, while technology better understood the essential requirements around workflows and data.

Together, we developed a roadmap that best served our needs in the short and long term and we are relentlessly executing it.

How are emerging technologies enabling an underwriting company to strike the right balance of resource?

While we follow the basically universal process of underwriting—from originating submissions to issuing policies—technology can provide advantages at nearly every stage. For ‘flow’ business, technology enables the entire processes to be accelerated—allowing us to do more with less while being equally judicious and thorough.

For ‘craft’ business, technology allows for greater analysis by supplementing traditional analysis with third-party data to provide deeper context for better decision-making. With technology as the foundation, we can reconsider the roles of individuals. Technology is not replacing humans, but instead acts as a force multiplier, allowing already talented underwriters to increase productivity, and the company to scale the business.

Which tools empower underwriters to manage substantial submission flow and prioritise for optimal business success?

Within the Send platform, we use machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for intelligent text extraction across multiple application forms, which eliminates the need for manual data entry. When combined with business rules, underwriting criteria, and third-party data, this information allows us to score incoming opportunities to distinguish the most desirable from the rest and allocate our time and attention accordingly.

That information is pushed downstream into underwriting applications, which are pre-populated—advancing our starting point for analysis.  During the underwriting process, we use AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and integrated APIs as a “power assist” to allow an underwriter to make quicker decisions with confidence.

How can insurers create systems that underwriters want to work with?

We cannot overstate the importance of culture as a driving force for tackling inefficiencies. As a company, we’re equally unsatisfied with the status quo as we are optimistic about the possibilities associated with technology. Since our team knows the plan and sees the value, they’re willing to invest their time and expertise to get it right and willing to embrace changes.

We built Bowhead Specialty with a clear intent to use only one system for underwriting, which includes application data, underwriter notes, and policy folders—all in one unified platform. The underwriting system was intentionally separated from the policy administration and servicing systems, claims, and accounting.

We expect a lot of innovation in underwriting technologies and wanted them separated from systems of record. Third, we regularly revisit our processes to ensure that employees are having positive experiences with technology. We’re quick to identify pain points and address them. The needs of our teams and the expectations of our brokers and customers are constantly changing, so it’s vital that we maintain a culture of continuous improvement.

What are the optimum features of an underwriting workbench designed to increase productivity?

We believe the following features are table stakes:

What does it take to mobilise ‘speed’ for competitive advantage and improve broker relations?

We think a lot about optimising the broker experience using technology to improve communication at every opportunity. First, speedy submission acceptance is key. We need to let a broker know if their submission has been accepted and who has been assigned to the account as soon as possible.

Then, pre-underwriting decisions should be made quickly. If we determine the risk is desirable, we want to be the first underwriter to express interest. During the evaluation process, which is enabled by technology, the underwriter is empowered to communicate, quote and bind at the push of a button. Collecting the data and outcomes along the way will allow us to model and improve selection and quoting over time. Finally, being a good partner to our brokers means that documents are clean, accurate, and delivered quickly.

What are the key takeaways you’d like delegates to learn?

Recruitment: Establish a digitally oriented culture from the beginning. Invite everyone to participate in the digital journey and embrace change. Establish a mindset of continuous improvement. Integration: Collaboration is essential. Serialised pipelines are no longer the most efficient means of development. Appreciate nuances and use them to strengthen your approach. For example, underwriters and IT think of data differently. Underwriters view it as information for transactions or product, while IT thinks of information as architectural. It is important to have all priorities, needs, and perspectives communicated throughout every stage.

Build: Utilise the learnings from interdepartmental interactions to build your product factory model. Use those best practices to get products released. Then capture the data and hydrate the systems.

To discover how to build a digital-first specialty provider from the ground up, join Bob Spina, chief information officer of Bowhead Specialty Underwriters, and Andy Moss, co-founder and chief customer officer of Send Technology at  Commercial Lines Innovation USA on May 10, 2022.