TL;DR
Hiscox says an AI submission-to-quote tool has sped up quotes by around 75% in two lines, terrorism and architects and engineers, Insurance Business reported on 3 November alongside the insurer’s nine-month figures. The tool, in development with Google Cloud since late 2023, is now being extended across its retail business. These are company figures, limited to those two lines.
Hiscox also reports that the share of quotes turning into bound policies has risen in those lines, without a figure in the report. A new UK pricing engine is in development to widen the range of business that can be underwritten automatically, and the insurer has named Phil Withey, who oversaw AI-augmented underwriting at its London Market arm, as group chief information officer.
The commercial context
The technology story sits beside a harder one. Total premium growth was 9.5%, but Hiscox London Market’s headline 9.9% rise to $1.05 billion falls to 3.9% once prior-period adjustments are removed. Rates across that portfolio fell 5% over nine months, and Hiscox has been walking away from underpriced property, energy and renewables risks.
That matters for reading the AI claim. In our view, faster quoting is worth most when an underwriter can spend the saved time choosing better risks in a softening market, which is close to the case Hiscox makes for itself. In September, its underwriting transformation lead Mike Maletsky told Insurance Business that AI was “taking off the administrative burden on underwriters” and leaving more time to speak to brokers and clients.
Hiscox’s change programme is on track for $75 million of profit and loss benefit this year, at a cost of the same amount. The report does not say how much of that comes from AI.
A London market pattern
Hiscox is not alone in putting AI into underwriting work. We covered MS Amlin’s reinsurance wordings tool and Guidewire’s agreed purchase of hyperexponential in October.
For UK brokers, the claim that can be tested is turnaround. Hiscox’s UK retail arm reported 11.1% constant-currency growth, and digital direct new business grew about 40%, though neither figure is attributed to the AI tool.
Looking Forward
The wider retail rollout is the real test, since terrorism and architects cover are specialist lines that may not behave like volume business. In our view, the numbers to look for are quote-to-bind rates and loss ratios on AI-assisted business. Speed is the easy part to report; whether those quotes turn out to be well priced takes longer to show, and that evidence is not yet in this update.