Modernizing front-line underwriting technology for commercial insurance carriers is a critical directive that maintains competitiveness in an ever-changing marketplace, where agility and adaptability are essential to respond to shifting risks and customer expectations.
The task can be gargantuan and the costs daunting, requiring disciplined resource allocation and prioritization to avoid overruns and fatigue. Carriers tend to grow through mergers and acquisitions and maintain a fragmented web of legacy systems. This fragmentation leads to inconsistent processes, siloed underwriting practices, and a decline in underwriting discipline.
Modern systems provide better reporting capabilities, improved security and stability, underwriting insights, and agile capabilities that enable iterative delivery and rapid course correction in a quick-moving marketplace.
New policy administration systems (PAS) support faster submission lifecycle movement, modern rating and pricing tools allow rapid updates to modeling and finer control over the book, and the rapidly growing underwriting workbench market is building powerful tools to improve underwriting outcomes and support decision-making. Underwriters benefit from these tools, and carriers gain better portfolio mix control, improved loss ratios, reduced premium leakage, and streamlined processes.
Large-scale change isn’t easy, and it is often met with resistance from front-line teams if they feel the technology limits their flexibility in the market or doesn’t meet their needs.
Limited flexibility might be the point—compliant systems have guardrails aligned to underwriter authority levels, support the referral process, and ensure submissions are rated and priced appropriately.
Overcoming apprehension requires not only strong change management but also agile practices that deliver value incrementally and resource strategies that keep teams engaged without overloading them. Driving these benefits is critical for any carrier looking to modernize their underwriting technology successfully.
Below are the essential steps for a successful implementation.
01
Before any technology is selected, or scope is defined, the organization must understand what problem it's solving. “We need to modernize” is not a compelling reason; it's jumping to a diagnosis without understanding the symptoms to address.
There are plenty of modernization options, but it's important to understand your business's needs before choosing a solution.
Start with design sprints and workshops involving the impacted business units. Bring underwriters, assistants, raters, and other stakeholders into the room. Map the current-state process in detail, including task flows, decision points, roles, systems, and third-party interactions. Identify bottlenecks and pain points. Understand where underwriting quality dips, where data capture fails, and where premium leakage occurs.
IT should participate early, observing demos of legacy systems and learning what’s working and what’s not. This sets the foundation for meaningful collaboration and ensures that technology decisions are grounded in reality.
This is also the stage to start considering external partners to help understand broader market complexities. The right firm will have experience working with a wide range of carriers and understand not just the challenges that impact your specific business, but also the broader technological challenges of the industry and how others have addressed them.
Once the problem is framed, the business must select a dedicated leader, such as a senior manager with credibility, vision, and a deep understanding of the impacted unit. This person owns the project from the business side and must be fully committed to its success.
Next comes the SME selection. These are your front-line underwriters and assistants. They don't need to be pulled entirely from their roles, but they do need relief and support. Their goals should shift to reflect their contribution to the long-term build. They must be experienced, articulate, and well-networked within the unit. They should be able to speak coherently about their process and reach out when they don't have direct experience in a specific area.
SMEs are not just contributors, they're ambassadors. Their credibility with peers will influence how the broader team perceives the project. Choose them wisely, support them fully, and make sure they understand the weight of their role.
02
Change management plays a central role in identifying stakeholders, assessing impacts, and crafting the future state process. This isn't just about technology, it's about behavior, culture, and process.
Change management must work closely with business, operations, and IT to review technology options and assess the change risk, level of effort, and stakeholder impact for both selecting a modern platform and planning the initial release development.
This does not drive your platform selection, but it should inform your decisions on developing your implementation roadmap and reducing adoption risk early on.
Once a platform is selected, Change management should work with key stakeholders to develop a future state process. It should incorporate learnings from the design sprint and address known bottlenecks.
Once design sprints are completed, a platform is selected, the business problems are understood, and leadership must begin planning an inception workshop.
All key players should be present, including Underwriting, Operations, IT, Compliance, Product, and, if impacted, Claims. Their input is essential to shaping the solution.
This workshop will include a complete discussion of the current state, pain points, and future vision. IT should present wireframes and ask clarifying questions. The Change management team should outline the future state process. Everyone should align identified gaps, and a formal sign-off should follow.
Do not cut corners on inception. Hold it in person. Bring senior leaders to reinforce the importance of the change. Elevate the business lead and empower the SMEs. The business leader presents the vision, the unit's critical needs, what they expect IT to deliver, and what they expect from the SMEs.
Inception may last a few days, a week, or longer. Provide catered lunches and create networking opportunities. Introduce SMEs to the IT and Change management teams they will work with for the next 8 to 12 months. Share a detailed agenda in advance. Build in buffer time and schedule debrief sessions with the business lead, Change management, and IT. Plan resource allocation carefully to ensure SMEs have the bandwidth to participate fully without jeopardizing their day-to-day responsibilities, and confirm IT and Change management teams have the capacity to pivot if priorities shift. Always be prepared to adjust if something is not working.
You are doing more than gathering requirements: you are building excitement and setting the tone.
You are integrating the Change Management team into the impacted unit and creating a space for honest feedback. It must be a judgment-free zone. SMEs must feel safe to speak openly about what is not working and how they manage their desks. If they are not honest, you will build the wrong tool.
03
Once requirements are finalized, the intensity of early discovery work will taper, but disciplined execution becomes critical. The build phase should follow an agile framework with a series of well-planned sprints. Each sprint must have clear deliverables, defined acceptance criteria, and a prioritized backlog tied to business value.
Resource load management is essential.
Teams need to monitor capacity closely, calling out early when planned functionality proves more complex or resource-intensive than expected. When this happens, the project team and business lead should quickly determine whether scope can shift—can the feature move to a subsequent release, and what are the business impacts of deferring it?
The reverse scenario is equally important: if development is easier than anticipated, consider pulling in items initially deemed out of scope to maximize value.
Regular communication with SMEs and the business lead ensure development stays aligned with business needs. Backup SMEs should attend these sessions to stay informed and be ready to step in if needed. Maintaining a rolling risk log for dependencies and integration points, along with defined fallback options for critical features, helps mitigate disruption. Transparency across all stakeholders is non-negotiable; it limits surprises and accelerates decision-making.
Communication should be intentional and strategic. Start with managers at least 9 months before release (6 months is optimal). Follow with all-employee forums, driven by SMEs and business leadership. Increase cadence as go-live approaches: monthly, bi-weekly, post-UAT, pre-launch.
Include regular showcases of the new platform, highlighting key benefits and process impacts. SMEs can provide demos during team meetings and share development progress. Clearly communicate the scope and lean into the ability to continuously and rapidly enhance modern platforms.
Change management must build trust, which means they must be heavily embedded in the requirements process. They’ll work with SMEs to deliver training, explain workarounds, and diffuse resistance. They must be experts in the process and understand the products. If they lack credibility, adoption will suffer.
04
Testing options vary by release, with IT driving early business testing (EBT) and user acceptance testing (UAT), but neither guarantees adoption.
That’s why Model Office is essential. It’s a readiness checkpoint designed to confirm that users can work effectively in the new system and that the change story has landed.
Model Office simulates a “day in the life” for underwriters and assistants, allowing them to process real scenarios in a controlled environment.
This approach builds confidence, identifies training gaps, and uncovers usability issues before go-live.
Change management should lead this effort, preparing detailed training materials including step-by-step instructions, expected outputs, and mock submissions to support the session.
Model Office participants should be new users, not SMEs. However, SMEs should be in the room to assist with training delivery, answer questions, and understand their peers' feedback.
The change management team will be heavily engaged with these SMEs and may even need to deliver the test training.
End the session with an implementation readiness survey: Was the process clear and acceptable? Were there any negative surprises? Was the training sufficient? Survey results must be reviewed immediately. Anything below a 90% positive response requires action. A poor survey should be enough to delay implementation.
Pushing forward despite negative feedback will damage adoption and satisfaction. This is the final moment for a business leader to step in and hit the brakes. This pause can allow IT and Change Management to pull together a plan to address issues, shift the narrative, and turn something potentially disastrous into a success story.
05
Implementation can take many forms: pilot, phased, or regional. What matters most is leadership presence. Celebrate the work of SMEs and business leaders. Amplify their success. Drive home the effort everyone put in to create a successful future platform for your teams.
Training should be delivered by SMEs and the Change management team. The team should include a lead trainer with underwriting experience, a producer to manage logistics, and additional resources to support users in real time.
Ensure the training environment is ready and users are provisioned well in advance.
After go-live, stay engaged. IT and Change management should remain involved for 60–90 days, providing process support and triaging issues. Continue conversations with underwriters to refine training and prepare for future releases.
The new technology is in place, IT is re-tasking resources, and change management is moving on to the next project. What happens next is critically important: the hand-off to BAU. This transition determines whether the platform grows efficiently or becomes a source of frustration.
When a new implementation is live, attention is high.
Afterward, production support competes for limited resources. To avoid stagnation, adopt a continuous improvement mindset. Establish governance that prioritizes enhancements based on business value and user feedback. Regular stakeholder reviews should drive these priorities, ensuring that the platform evolves in line with strategic goals and front-line needs.
Ensure you have the right people in place, those with a broad understanding of your organization and how improvements affect the front line. Maintain ownership of process, change, and training materials so they can evolve long after project teams move on. Your long-term support must be as adaptive as your technology.
While modernizing your underwriting technology can feel daunting, the potential to strengthen underwriting discipline, improve portfolio control, and maintain competitiveness makes the effort worthwhile, provided adoption is achieved. It’s a long-term investment, and success depends on adoption, continuous improvement, and smart resource planning.
Invest in your people by understanding their needs early and aligning resources to support them throughout the journey. Build a strong change management team that partners with the business to craft the change story, drive adoption, and sustain engagement beyond go-live. Make inception meaningful by including the right people and using the time to align priorities so IT can focus on delivering the business vision.
Communicate consistently, build excitement early, and sustain engagement through go-live and into BAU. Test and hold a Model office to make sure your process is workable, your change messaging landed, and your training is effective.
Above all, appoint a business lead with vision, authority, and the courage to make tough calls, including delaying implementation if the solution isn’t ready. Every release is different, and skipping a step doesn’t guarantee failure, but it increases risk. If you’re investing significant time and capital into a platform your teams will use for a decade or more, why take chances when agile practices allow you to adapt without cutting corners?
Modernizing is inevitable, but it’s a decision that demands careful planning and disciplined execution. Releasing and hoping for the best is not a strategy for success; the consequences can damage reputation, erode employee satisfaction, drive talent loss, and create costly remediation efforts in production.
Don’t just invest in technology; invest in your people and the activities required to drive a successful implementation. One extra month of testing, change communication, and BAU planning will save you years of headaches.
The upgrade continues Radar’s evolution and WTW’s commitment to provide insurers with the latest technology to navigate today’s most significant market shifts.
