’We’re able to identify quickly where the business isn’t performing and where decisions are needed simply because we have more data,’ says head of pricing 

Aviva yesterday (17 October 2023) announced that it had deployed insurtech Hyperexponential’s pricing decision intelligence platform hx Renew to build 20 new insurance pricing models in nine months.

These models are now being used by underwriters to create policies in under ten minutes, which was a process that previously took an hour or more.

Shyam Bhayani, Aviva’s global, corporate and specialty (GSC) head of pricing, said: “We’re able to identify quickly where the business isn’t performing and where decisions are needed simply because we have more data.

“We spend less time cleaning data and less time on workarounds to patch it up. This all means we can do the analysis, make decisions and get back to underwriters faster.”

Fast and accurate

Due to Aviva’s global, corporate and specialty (GCS) team’s huge customer base, it needed to rapidly develop its pricing models and ratings, while maintaining accuracy and stability.

Initially, Aviva considered building its own solution but determined it would take too long and decided to contract with hx Renew.

The improved performance and reliability of the newly developed models mean underwriters can respond to brokers and create policies far more quickly.

Meanwhile, the better access to data has also reduced the time spent on processing it, allowing the team to GCS explore batch testing on the platform to make for faster impact analysis.

Amrit Santhirasenan, Hyperexponential chief executive and cofounder, added: “With the GSC team’s sights now set on unlocking the full value of hx Renew’s decision intelligence capabilities through wider systems integrations and the application of machine learning, I’m extremely excited for the next phase of our partnership.

“We are delighted to see Aviva achieve such a high level of pricing transformation in such a short timespan with hx Renew. Building 20 pricing models in just nine months is a remarkable achievement.”

Prior to this partnership, Aviva relied on Excel spreadsheet for its rating tools and pricing models, which took 20 to 30 minutes to open the software and download the data.

This was a huge drain on underwriters’ time and as a result there were delays in response to broker requests, which put potential conversions at risk.

It is not the only insurtech that Aviva has partnered with – in October 2022 the insurer partnered with Lemonade to deliver the insurtech’s content product to the UK.