[Greatest Hits] Actuaries and underwriters join forces in digital transformation | Jamie Wilson, Hyperexponential, and Simon Cooper-Williams, Markel

Why pricing actuaries are becoming software builders for underwriters

Pricing actuaries are shifting from producing a single number to building data tools and insights that sit inside the underwriting process. Pairing actuarial judgement with engineering skills and modern rating platforms replaces slow, brittle spreadsheets. That lets insurers keep recalibrating pricing models continuously instead of rebuilding them every few years.

Takeaways

• Underwriters now demand far more actuarial analytics. Markel's Underwriter of the Future programme sets segmentation and portfolio management expectations for underwriting divisions. Actuaries fit because slicing, stitching and making sense of messy data is their core skill. Simon's data-driven underwriting team grew from one person in 2019 to 12, with about 16 expected.
• Cross-functional teams cut delivery from years to weeks. Simon pairs actuaries with data architects, data engineers and software engineers in small teams. Using Power BI, a Markel dashboard project that once could take a year launched in a month. Business intelligence tools have changed greatly over five years.
• Technical actuaries beat the underwriter-analyst-developer chain. Jamie argues a request passed from underwriter to business analyst to developer returns months later and not quite right. An actuary with underwriting context and coding skill delivers much faster, so many Hyperexponential customers embed developer skills in pricing teams building in HX Renew.
• Spreadsheets drain teams and resist change. At Jamie's previous insurer, rate change reports were hacky code and emailed Excel files, costing the whole pricing team about three weeks each quarter until his team automated the pipeline into a live web dashboard. Emailed spreadsheets also create version confusion and make adding rating factors painful.
• Pricing belongs inside the underwriter's workflow. HX Renew connects pricing to policy admin and sanctions screening, and Jamie sees Cytora integration letting submission data flow straight in. Underwriters can see a policy's marginal portfolio impact and recent quotes while pricing. Markel's strategy says pricing must be fun, easy and integrated.
• Models should improve continuously, not every five years. Insurers traditionally reuse old models as benchmarks, then rebuild from scratch. Markel is adding external data as rating factors that do not yet affect technical price, can batch rate old policies through new models, and wants factors added within a month or two.
• Good data tools now attract senior underwriters. Simon says senior underwriters joining Markel ask about its dashboards, data and pricing autonomy. Jamie adds that frequent model updates require cultural acceptance from underwriters, and teams should plan from day one what data to collect and what incremental calibration to run.