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AI is the defining technology of this decade. After years of unfulfilled promises from Hollywood and comic books, the science fiction AI future we’ve long been promised has finally become business reality. 

We can already see AI following a familiar path through the marketplace similar to past disruptive technologies.

• Stage one: it’s embraced by early adopters before the general public even knows it exists;
• Stage two: cutting-edge startups tap these technologies to overcome long-standing business challenges; and then
• Stage three: regulators draft rules to guide its usage and mitigate negative impacts.

There should be no doubt that AI-powered insurtech has accelerated through the first two stages in near record time and is now entering stage three.

AI underwriting solutions, meet the rule-makers

The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies recently adopted regulations on AI applications and governance in life insurance. To be clear, Colorado isn’t an outlier, it’s a pioneer. Other states are following suit and crafting their own AI regulations, with federal-level AI rules beginning to take shape as well.

The early days of the regulatory phase can be tricky for businesses. Insurers are excited to adopt advanced AI into their underwriting tech stack, but wary of investing in platforms knowing that future rules may impact those investments. 

We at Sixfold are very cognizant of this dichotomy: The ambition to innovate ahead, combined with the trepidation of going too far down the wrong path. That’s why we designed our platform in anticipation of these emerging rules. 

We’ve met with state-level regulators on numerous occasions over the past year to understand their concerns and thought processes. These engagements have been invaluable for all parties as their input played a major role in guiding our platform’s development, while our technical insights influenced the formation of these emerging rules.

To simplify a very complex motion: regulators are concerned with bias in algorithms. There’s a tacit understanding that humans have inherent biases, which may be reflected in algorithms and applied at scale.

Most regulators we’ve engaged with agree that these very legitimate concerns about bias aren’t a reason to prohibit or even severely restrain AI, which brings enormous positives like accelerated underwriting cycles, reduced overhead, and increased objectivity–all of which ultimately benefit consumers. However, for AI to work for everyone, it must be partnered with transparency, traceability, and privacy. This is a message we at Sixfold have taken to heart.

In AI, it’s all about transparency

The past decade saw a plethora of algorithmic underwriting solutions with varying degrees of capabilities. Too often, these tools are “black boxes” that leave underwriters, brokers, and carriers unable to explain how decisions were arrived at. Opaque decision-making no longer meets the expectations of today’s consumers—or of regulators. That’s why we designed Sixfold with transparency at its core.

Customers accept automation as part of the modern digital landscape, but that acceptance comes with expectations. Our platform automatically surfaces relevant data points impacting its recommendations and presents them to underwriters via AI-generated plain-language summarizations, while carefully controlling for “hallucinations.” It provides full traceability of all inputs, as well as a full lineage of changes to the UW model, so carriers can explain why results diverged over time. These baked-in layers of transparency allow carriers–and the regulators overseeing them–to identify and mitigate incidental biases seeping into UW models.

Beyond prioritizing transparency, we‘ve designed a platform that elevates data security and privacy. All Sixfold customers operate within isolated, single-tenant environments, and end-user data is never persisted in the LLM-powered Gen AI layer so information remains protected and secure.  

Even with platform features built in anticipation of external regulations, we understand that some internal compliance teams are cautious about integrating gen AI, a relatively new concept, into their tech stack. To help your internal stakeholders get there, Sixfold can be implemented with robust internal auditability and appropriate levels of human-in-the-loop-ness to ensure that every team is comfortable on the new technological frontier.

Want to learn more about how Sixfold works? Get in touch.

We at Sixfold believe regulators play a vital role in the marketplace by setting ground rules that protect consumers. As we see it, it’s not the technologist’s place to oppose or confront regulators; it’s to work together to ensure that technology works for everyone. 

The past decade saw more than its fair share of insurtech solutions promising to harness the power of “AI.” Many of these tools use hard-to-train algorithms powered by technologies that are years—if not decades—old. These legacy underwriting tools may inject some process efficiencies but don’t address the fact that insurers are struggling more than ever to expand capacity and grow Gross Written Premiums (GWPs) per underwriter. 

Underwriters face a lot of issues

A recent Accenture survey found that underwriters spend 40% of their time on administrative tasks—that’s a full two days of their work week. Inboxes are flooded with more submissions than ever, but by some estimates, underwriters are only able to respond to 10%. 

These aren’t challenges that companies can simply spend their way around; they require a fundamentally new approach. At Sixfold, we believe ascendent technologies, like LLM-powered generative AI, will lead the way. By moving beyond legacy solutions, carriers can take on today’s most pressing underwriting challenges–and the challenges on the horizon.

Ingesting and synthesizing data from disparate sources at scale

In the connected-everything world, insurers have access to more data than ever. This is a blessing and a challenge. On one hand, it guides decisioning and improves outcomes. On the other hand, there’s so much data from so many disparate sources, that it’s impossible to process efficiently.

Underwriters often find themselves sorting through hundreds of pages of documents for a single application. This limits capacity and squeezes GWP per underwriter. The only way to overcome these chokepoints without massively expanding headcount (and dinging already precarious expense ratios) is by using sophisticated AI tools to automate complex business tasks at scale.  

With Sixfold’s state-of-the-art underwriting AI, insurers can seamlessly integrate structured and unstructured data from multiple disparate sources. The platform reflects each company's unique risk appetite, so it automatically surfaces relevant information to accelerate UW decisioning.

Say it in plain language

Sixfold uses LLM-powered generative AI (the same tech behind ChatGPT, Bard, etc.) to summarize findings to underwriters in plain language, not spreadsheets. 

The platform, in effect, gives every underwriter their own virtual research team to build detailed reports on every application. Sixfold even generates coverage recommendations based on the company’s UW format. Compare this to legacy AI tools, which merely repackage information into number-heavy spreadsheets and dashboards, inevitably requiring additional inspection and contextualization from underwriters.

Even better? Plain language summations expand the underwriting talent pool by de-emphasizing technical and computational skillsets that are better handled by machines anyway. This is a crucial break from legacy tools, as insurers are now forced to compete for limited underwriting talent against private-equity-backed firms, insurtechs, MGAs, and other nontraditional insurance companies. 

Opacity in insurance is no longer an option, AI transparency is the new norm

Sixfold was designed with transparency at its core because that’s what today’s customers expect and increasingly what regulators demand. The platform provides full sourcing and lineage of all underwriting decisions with clear semantic summaries, i.e. no more “black boxes.” 

Customers accept automation as part of the modern digital landscape, but that acceptance comes with expectations of transparency, particularly when there are unexpected outcomes. Legacy solutions make it difficult—if not impossible—for insurers to provide customers with the clarity they deserve. Disappointed customers and diminished brand reputation, however, aren’t the only negative outcomes the industry needs to be mindful of.

As scaled automation becomes more ubiquitous, so have the calls for greater transparency from . At all levels of government, there are movements to counter the influence of potential bias through increased transparency and accountability—particularly in crucial areas like insurance. 

The marketplace has long since moved on from “because the algorithm said so,” and insurers must employ tools to reflect those changes.

Beyond legacy AI

We’re not the first to automate underwriting tasks using “AI,” but we’re the first to fundamentally reimagine the underwriting role using state-of-the-art LLM tech to generate business value. Customers are using our platform to accelerate submission-to-quote cycles by as much as 43% and massively increase their GWP per underwriter. 

The role of the underwriter is evolving, and the industry needs a new generation of tools to match. This is why we created Sixfold.

Over the past year, the world has had the opportunity to experiment with new LLM-powered generative AI platforms and discover how they might overcome longstanding business challenges. At Sixfold, saw the potential—and necessity—of applying gen AI in insurance underwriting.

Today, too many underwriters are overwhelmed with high-volume (but not necessarily high-value) tasks. They’re charged with collecting and synthesizing complex data from disparate sources, while subsequently acting as the key coordination points with agents and brokers.

Underwriters have exponentially more responsibilities but have been given only incrementally improved tools (at best). As a result, companies are hitting the inevitable limits of manual processes.

An automated underwriting system to free the underwriters

According to some recent data, underwriters spend almost half of their work lives on administrative activities. This reduced capacity leads to lost business and inevitably places downward pressure on Gross Written Premiums (GWPs).

We started Sixfold because we saw the opportunity for gen AI to free underwriters from that growing administrative weight. Think about it: what would you accomplish if you suddenly had 40% of your work-life back? Even better: what if the tasks you no longer had to do were the ones you liked least? All that excess administrative work is… work.

The role of underwriter has long since moved past just risk selection and pricing. As McKinsey frames it: modern underwriting requires “a comprehensive set of capabilities across hard and soft skills, qualitative judgments about future industry performance.” Machines handle numberwork and repetitive tasks better anyway, so let them have it and free humans to generate value using their subjective, uniquely human skill sets.

Underwriting should be a creative, multifaceted, and dare I say, even… joyful endeavor. I believe play a key role in this regard by empowering underwriters to focus on what they love most: making deals and closing business.

Generative AI, your new underwriting assistant

With gen AI, every underwriter can have their own virtual team of researchers and administrative assistants who know exactly what information the “boss” needs.

Guided by decades of collective industry experience, our platform collects and synthesizes data from third-party and proprietary sources, spots patterns, and summarizes risk in the insurer’s UW format—all using clear natural language.

The platform ingests and models each company's unique risk appetite, so it can surface relevant information and accelerate UW decisioning. Sixfold highlights application inconsistencies for additional underwriter review—for example, if a case falls within a potentially higher risk category, the platform pinpoints the precise data points that require closer evaluation.

With Sixfold, companies are accelerating submission-to-quote cycles by as much as 43%, clearing backlogged queues, and massively increasing GWP per underwriter. As for the underwriters themselves, they’re embracing the platform once they see the opportunity to move faster, be more productive, and make more money.

AI can’t replace underwriters, but it can amplify their potential

Across industries, there’s anxiety around potential disruptions gen AI will have on the labor market. I don’t see it that way. I view this technology as continuing the long technological tradition of freeing humans from mundane work.

Word processing software, for example, didn’t replace editors and writers—it allowed them to work faster while leaving the icky carbon paper, whiteout, and typewriter ink behind. All the while, the number of writers, editors, and communication workers continues to grow. Similarly, accounting software didn’t remove accountants, it just removed the need for accountants to be calculators and as a result, they could be more creative and specialized. Indeed, there’s currently a nationwide shortage of accountants. Moreover, as the latest data shows, they’re earning more than ever.

I see gen AI having a similar impact on insurance by emphasizing the creative and specialized side of the underwriting role, which can make them more satisfied, productive, and successful. Better yet, more successful underwriters have knock-on benefits down the value chain to agents and brokers (who get yes/no answers quicker) and the organization as a whole (through greatly improved GWP).

I believe there’s never been a better, or more joyful time to be an underwriter.

In today's evolving insurance landscape, the integration of generative AI in underwriting is one huge key to staying ahead. Here are a few considerations as you assess solutions:

🎯 1. Determine Your Priorities

‍Underwriting is complex, and each step of the process requires different types of generative solutions. Gen AI can greatly improve the intake, classification, summarization, and policy binding suggestions for risks. In the early days, we’ve seen most underwriters prioritize two key use-cases:

1) Fix the “front door” problem by enhancing the triaging and routing of submissions and

2) Summarize and classify submissions according to the insurer’s custom risk appetite.

🔮 2. This Isn’t Your Grandparents’ AI

The rules of generative AI are different from the previous generations of AI. Prior efforts at AI in underwriting have required mountains of training data to even get started. That’s not the case with Gen AI underwriting and you can start seeing impacts very quickly. As important, gen AI underwriting isn’t the dreaded “black box” that insurers and regulators fear. Instead, Gen AI underwriting models can “show their work” and explain all the steps they take to assist an underwriter.

🧠 3. Understand the Models

Navigating generative AI for underwriting requires a comprehensive understanding of the different LLMs and vector databases in the market. LLMs are not all equal. Each LLM has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some are better at summarization, some at reasoning, and others are better at helping an insurer to find its voice. And some still require special care to control hallucinations. Understanding the differences between models helps you select the most suitable LLM (or LLMs) for your specific underwriting needs. For example, we deploy 5 different fit-for-purpose LLMs for a variety of gen AI underwriting.

⚖️ 4. Start With Compliance at the Table

Compliance is paramount in the evolving world of generative AI. It is crucial to ensure your compliance and legal teams have a seat at the table. When set up optimally, generative AI can help streamline compliance procedures and address legal concerns. Emphasizing the shift from bias to traceability is vital as regulators increasingly stress the importance of transparent and accountable AI systems, ensuring that organizations remain ethically and legally sound in their AI-driven endeavors.

💡 5. Built-for-Purpose Tech > ChatGPT

While publicly available gen AI models like ChatGPT and Bard have their place in the consumer world, they can’t be used at an insurance carrier. The regulated nature of insurance coupled with data privacy concerns means you must use purpose-built technology for underwriting. With each insurance carrier possessing a distinct risk appetite and set of guidelines, built-for-purpose generative AI incorporates (and keeps secret!) your underwriting protocols.
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Sixfold is the first generative AI created exclusively for insurance underwriters. Our purpose-built AI increases an insurance carrier’s capacity, accuracy, and compliance. The Sixfold AI intelligently ingests, routes, classifies, and summarizes submissions, providing underwriters with trustworthy, data-driven policy recommendations in a user-friendly format. Sixfold provides full AI traceability, ensuring your underwriting processes adhere to your underwriting manual and regulations, enhancing trust and reliability in every decision.

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn

Working in enterprise tech - an industry that has notoriously struggled to stay on the cutting edge - I never needed much convincing that AI would one day unlock massive opportunity. While we are nowhere close to meaningful adoption of AI, that’s where we’re headed.

The first wave of generative AI has been horizontal with the release of GPT-4, Anthropic, Bard, and others. But the next wave will be vertical, marrying the summarization and reasoning superpowers of the LLMs with specially-trained models and industry expertise.

This is why today, I’m excited to announce the launch of Sixfold, the first generative artificial intelligence trained to solve the hardest problems in the insurance industry.

With $6.5 million in seed backing from Bessemer Venture Partners and Crystal Venture Partners, and leadership with decades of insurance experience, Sixfold is poised to rapidly transform how the insurance industry thinks about and uses AI.

To start, Sixfold Gen AI will focus on one of the most intractable challenges in insurance: the inefficiency of underwriting.

Underwriting is an art form, requiring human-level pattern recognition to capture all of the things that go into understanding a complex risk. For years, insurers have struggled to extract clear rules and standards for assessing risk because there has simply been too much information. Insurance carriers have a “front-door problem”: because of how manual and time-intensive the underwriting process is, insurers can’t provide quotes on all of the opportunities that come their way.

A smart underwriting platform like you’ve never seen before.

Prior attempts at AI in insurance haven’t gained much traction because they took a “black box” approach and thought they knew better than the underwriters. These failed attempts need way too much data and haven’t produced consistent results. Instead, we’ve trained generative AI models to "understand" all of this information and assist humans with the manual assessment. With the Sixfold Assistant, underwriters will be able to quickly evaluate and rate all submissions, thus improving underwriters’ capacity as well as the accuracy and traceability of their decisions.

Today, the Sixfold Assistant is best positioned to eliminate a lot of the “grunt work” that underwriters deal with on a daily basis: tracking down information from third parties, poring through thousands of pages of documents, and making sense of unstructured data. Sixfold will serve as a co-pilot to underwriters, plugging into existing technology so insurers don’t need to overhaul legacy systems in order to take advantage of Sixfold’s capabilities.

We’re thrilled to be launching with our customer BTIS, the commercial insurance provider focused on the construction and building trades industry. Sixfold will be an important tool for BTIS underwriters to improve the speed and accuracy of their underwriting efforts. Sixfold will ultimately make BTIS more competitive by allowing its underwriters to spend less time poring over data and more time issuing policies to its customers.

Sixfold is partnering at launch with BuildZoom, the leading provider of contractor profile data, property building permit data and contractor sourcing services. Sixfold will also expand its partner ecosystem to include consulting and advisory firms, cloud providers, risk and prior loss providers and medical records providers.

Sixfold’s initial focus will be on the commercial property & casualty and life insurance sectors, with plans to expand across the entire insurance industry, going after the over $100 billion spent annually in the US to underwrite insurance.

I’m particularly excited to launch Sixfold because of who I’m doing it with.

Our founding team is made up of former founders and operators, with deep experience in highly-regulated industries, including decades in insurance. Jane Tran is our COO and co-founder. Jane and I spent years working together as founding team members at Unqork, the $2 billion enterprise no-code platform. Our CTO and co-founder Brian Moseley, joins us from American Express where he was Head of Developer Experience.

A huge thanks to Charles Birnbaum and Jeremy Levine at Bassemer Venture Partners, and Jonathan Crystal and Stephen McGovern at Crystal Venture Partners for supporting us in this journey, to our ambitious customers, and to our partners.

Let’s rewrite the rules of insurance together!

This announcement was originally posted on LinkedIn