Aviva claims industry first with new AI underwriting tool for CI cover

Aviva is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) underwriting summarisation tool to support individual critical illness (CI) insurance applications.

The move, which Aviva claims is an industry first, means the insurer will now be able to summarise most individual protection applications where a medical report is required.

Aviva claims the move has already delivered improvements in underwriting efficiency and turnaround times.

Robert Morrison, chief underwriting officer at Aviva, said: “Building on the recent launch of our life insurance AI summarisation underwriting tool, this is another important step in our commitment to making protection insurance faster, simpler and more accessible for our customers using generative AI.

“By bringing AI summarisation to the protection market, we’re helping more customers get the protection they need more quickly.”

AI development

Aviva’s AI underwriting capability focuses on the front end of the journey – supporting underwriters to make decisions more quickly from the point of application.

For CI applications, lengthy and complex reports can be made into short summaries containing the relevant information for underwriters to review.

This has reduced the time underwriters spend reviewing each case by around half.

Morrison said: “Throughout development, we’ve focused on enhancing the stages of the underwriting journey that deliver the most material gains for customers, advisers and our underwriters in both service and efficiency.

”Our current capability also extends to post-application auditing and our next focus will be on delivering summarisation for income protection.”