Smarter, Since 1994

Opportunity and Technology: Not Just More Customers, Better Customers
In the early 1990s, a group of proven business leaders from a variety of backgrounds saw an opportunity in the insurance industry: to create a company based on sound underwriting principles – and to leverage technology to do so. Where many opportunists saw technology as a way to bypass underwriting and thereby to generate more customers, the minds at Applied Underwriters with their hands-on experience applying technology to business propositions, took their name to heart; they would apply technology to truly improve the underwriting process. As a result, they would generate better customers.

Using Technology Well
In the tech boom of the 1990s, it seemed that technology would be the way to bigger, more streamlined business, putting an end to timely underwriting done by individuals. Now the Internet could offer an automated, “black box” approach: a customer types in information and the computer generates a policy.

But risk is a tricky thing. The further you are from your customers, the harder it is to assess their risk appropriately, and hence the harder it is to build a stable risk portfolio. And, of course, the farther you are from your customer, the harder it is to serve that customer well.

Applied Underwriters therefore did not see technology as a way to bypass underwriting. On the contrary, they saw it as a way to know the customer better, to open up communication rather than to shut it down. Technology would allow Applied Underwriters to centralize all the information about a potential customer and to generate reports in real time about a customer's risks. And based on this information, real people could underwrite intelligently, based on information known to be true and thus allowing underwriters to act confidently on their assumptions. Premiums more accurately match actual risk and, in the process, the customer becomes better served.

Building from the Ground Up
As the senior executives at Applied Underwriters are dynamic individuals who understand the relationship between business propositions and technology, Applied Underwriters built itself an IT system from the ground up – a system that not only works but that is technologically appropriate and seamlessly integrated with company processes and, most importantly, with business objectives. This system would not be for technology's sake but would serve the business ends. Hence, where older companies remain burdened by legacy systems and processes, Applied Underwriters maintains an up-to-date, streamlined system that facilitates communication within the company as well as with customers.

Opportunity Yields Success
The Applied Underwriters approach – sound underwriting as a way to better serve the customer and to generate profit – has proven successful. In fact, since its inception in 1994, Applied Underwriters has consistently grown profitably year after year.