Transforming Insurance: Submissions Automation & Faster Quote-to-Bind

Picture this: Your mid-sized insurance company specializes in personal and commercial auto coverage across North America. Each day, your underwriting team receives about 150 new vehicle policy submissions through email, agent portals, and your company website in formats such as PDFs, spreadsheets, ACCORD form, etc. 

Underwriters spend an average of 20-30 minutes organizing 15-25 data points per submission before actual risk assessment begins. Incomplete fields require additional follow-up, which further delays processing, leading to missed opportunities to generate new premium revenue. 

The Admin Bottleneck in Claims Processing 

J.D. Power's 2024 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study concluded that administrative tasks consume 30% of the 17.5-day average an auto claim takes to process from FNOL to settlement.  

Why Automate Submissions? 

Adopting intelligent solutions such as Inflow by Insillion helps Carriers and MGAs to streamline the submissions process—redirecting employee efforts to higher-value tasks, ultimately increasing underwriting productivity. These platforms leverage AI to extract and categorize data from various formats received across channels. 

They not only understand context such as writer intent and email threads, but also support multi-language and handwriting recognition. They can also arrange submissions by priority and fine-tune your risk assessment — Neat, right? 

Submissions Automation: How it works  

Submissions automation platforms like Inflow can be integrated with any channel or platform through which submissions information is received (email, agent portal, messages, etc). When a submission document enters the system, the AI model extracts and classifies the data. This is done using technology like IDP (Intelligent Document Processing), which combines OCR (Optical Character Recognition), Machine Learning, and NLP to read, interpret, and convert unstructured documents into structured, actionable data. 

Submissions In-take: Going from Structured to Unstructured 

Both structured data like ACORD forms and unstructured data like e-mails and spreadsheets are easily classified, following which processed information flows into human-in-the-loop validation systems if verification is required. With InFlow, missing or incomplete fields automatically trigger notifications to the client or broker via the same channel used for submission.  This increases both intake speed and accuracy, significantly aiding overworked administrative staff or underwriters. 

Optimized Triage: Get Submissions to the Right Hands 

This information is then triaged, which means it is classified to reflect its priority tier. This is decided based on factors such as premium size, risk complexity, deadline urgency, etc. It is then routed to an underwriter or underwriting team according to their expertise level, region they handle, etc. This ensures that each case is reviewed by the most qualified team, allowing faster and more accurate decisions. 

Data Enrichment: Make informed decisions 

Finally, any additional information that an underwriter would find relevant or helpful (claims history, location-based risks, etc.) is enriched with the existing information and sent to them. Hazard Hub (for location-specific data) and Veridion (for location data pre-fill) are some of the data sources available for integration.  This process, called submission enrichment, is done automatically by the insurer's systems, which are connected to internal or external sources through API integrations. The decision of which fields require enrichment is usually a collaborative one- decided by underwriters, actuarial teams, and business analysts, among others.  

Straight-Through Processing for Faster Quote-to-Bind  

Underwriters receive an enriched, structured submission, with documents such as a loss run PDFs to efficiently assess risk. For simple, straight-through cases, customers fitting an ideal profile (standard coverage needs and low loss exposure) are quickly approved with minimal manual review. 

Expert Oversight for Complex Submissions 

When a submission is high-value or checks a condition requiring further assessment (non-straight-through processing), the underwriter reviews the submission manually. For example, a truck fleet owner with a history of 3 small claims requests a tailored insurance policy with coverage across multiple states. In this case, the system flags the submission for review due to the interstate coverage requirements and potential risk implications based on the prior claims' patterns. 

Rule-based systems combine risk scores with pricing, calculating an approximate quote. The underwriter then adjusts and finalizes coverage based on their professional assessment.

Submissions Automation in Specialty Lines 

Specialty insurance submissions involve complex policy structures and detailed technical data. While underwriting these risks requires deep expertise and careful evaluation, valuable time is often spent on manual intake and data preparation. 

Insillion’s InFlow structures and validates data at the point of intake, extracting key incoming information from any channel and automatically flagging missing details. This both improves submission quality and speeds up turnaround times. 

As a result, MGAs and underwriters focus on what matters most: informed risk assessment and timely decision-making. 

Getting Started  

Underwriters spend up to 40% of their time on non-core and administrative tasks—costing the insurance industry an estimated $85–$160 billion in efficiency losses over five years.  

Automating submissions with InFlow by Insillion cuts down on these repetitive tasks, creating a competitive advantage where you quote faster and accelerate your SLAs—all while keeping loss ratios in check. That means more satisfied employees, happier brokers, and businesses built to last.

Supercharge insurance workflows today with InFlow. 

Frequently Asked Questions