Remove Bottlenecks, Accelerate Decisions

Today, life & disability carriers have access to more data from more data sources than ever, but the processing of all that data has paradoxically decreased efficiency and limited underwriting capacity. The industry has wisely turned to gen AI to help it reap the rewards of the modern data abundance while minimizing the cost.

In our view, gen-AI-powered underwriting isn’t about conversing with chatbots, it’s about collaborating with a platform that understands exactly what you need and exactly how to get it. But how should a platform like that function? What would it even look like? We started the process of answering those questions by interviewing dozens of underwriters to understand their frustrations, goals, and how other tools have failed them in the past. This input has guided our approach to design built around simplicity, context, trust, and fun. 

Simplicity

Many L&D carriers rely on automated extraction tools and/or offshore teams for their data-processing needs. These result in long multi-page reports, which are typically just ordered lists of data. Underwriters are left to rifle through these tomes to pull out relevant info. Sixfold eliminates these overly manual tasks by injecting AI throughout the underwriting process.

We use cutting-edge AI to independently build a virtual model of carriers’ unique risk appetites, so the platform can understand what constitutes negative or positive risk signals for that carrier. The platform taps a different set of purpose-built AI models to process ingested data and gracefully surface precisely what information underwriters need — and nothing else.

How does this AI wonder translate into design? We’ve leaned hard into “inconspicuously helpful.” The best AI is one that doesn’t make a show of itself, but can be depended upon to solve problems when called into action. More old-school British butler, and less Robin Williams’ genie from Aladdin. From a design perspective, that means elevating minimalism and simplicity.

Underwriters never see the AI hard at work ingesting data from disparate sources (APS files, MIB reports, labs, etc.). And they shouldn’t have to. All they want to see are easily scannable bits of appetite-aligned information in a unified dashboard experience. Leave the sausage-making to us, enjoy your hotdog.

This effortless minimalism extends to every part of the platform. On the case list page, underwriters can peruse a list of applicants with clear visual cues signifying which cases are closely aligned with underwriting criteria and which aren’t. In a previous technological era, underwriters had to invest time in scrutinizing each and every applicant with limited ability to triage, leading to reduced productivity. With Sixfold, they can focus their efforts on the biggest impact.

Context

Traditional data processing & ingestion treats all information equally. Taking a daily multivitamin is, for example, given with the same “weight” as immunosuppressants taken after an organ transplant. “Flattened” data reports, no matter how thorough, require underwriter intermediation to pick out the relevant through lines. 

We can do better in 2024.

Sixfold taps a medley of nine AI models to identify relevant data points from disparate sources and “connect the dots” between them. It’s the difference between, say, mentioning an applicant has diabetes versus summarizing how it’s being managed, e.g., “applicant was diagnosed with diabetes in 2015, but it is being adequately managed through diet and insulin.”

We haven’t merely replaced one form of summarization with an AI-powered one. We use gen AI prudently and solely in service of accelerating decision-making. Our goal is to present underwriters with as little information as possible (or, rather, just the right information) so they can focus their energies on making informed decisions. 

Concise auto-generated explanations are placed front and center, but underwriters can always dive deeper into specific information as needed (e.g., the platform may let you know that recent cholesterol readings were acceptable, but you have the option to dive into the readings from the last few labs).

‍Trust

The best underwriters are detail-oriented, and they deserve tools that meet (or better yet, exceed) their standards of thoroughness. Underwriters using Sixfold should be confident that everything has been scrutinized as thoroughly as if they did it themselves—if not more!

We accomplish this by showing our work. Transparency is baked into the Sixfold UX. We provide sourcing of all surfaced risk factors and conclusions, right down to the source and page so underwriters know precisely where a conclusion came from, and why it was arrived at.

And a little bit of fun

We want engagements with our platform to feel like working with your favorite coworker. You know the one we’re talking about right? The one that gets things done, but throws in a little light-hearted banter and joking around to improve your day just a bit.

Going through medical records isn’t what most people consider enjoyable. So we injected some moments of surprise and delight that can bring the joy back to underwriting. Our platform includes small flourishes that we hope provide a little levity.

Throughout the site, we’ve included illustrations of friendly robots collaborating with humans and empowering the humans to do more. The overriding theme of this aesthetic? Clay. Why clay? It feels deeply human, handmade with little imperfections that add character. We believe that AI can liberate humans from rote work (which is better handled by machines anyway) so they can emphasize their uniquely human qualities. The machines aren’t going to take over our jobs – they’re going to free us to bring humanity back to the work we do.

Want to see the platform in action? Watch our on-demand product demo for a live walkthrough of Sixfold’s Life & Disability offerings.

With our latest product update, we’ve sharpened our focus on Life & Disability via a suite of AI-powered features that overcome common underwriting challenges.

Sixfold’s number one superpower is to easily–and quickly–ingest carriers’ unique underwriting guidelines and automatically surface the submissions that match the carrier’s unique risk appetite. Moreover, the platform empowers Life & Disability carriers to streamline the underwriting process by:

🔘 Ingesting data from multiple disparate sources in an instant

🔘 Generating a comprehensive summarization of the applicant's health history and lifestyle within minutes

🔘 Surfacing positive & negative risk signals aligning with the unique risk appetite of each carrier 

🔘 Triaging submissions with an underwriter-facing dashboard for improved resource allocation

We've significantly broadened our Life & Disability offerings by expanding into six key areas, facilitating us to quickly create a comprehensive 360-degree applicant profile in just minutes by: 

✔️ Reducing manual workload through improved document ingestion 

Our technology has been significantly enhanced to process and analyze an extensive history of lab results, diagnoses, and medication records, covering years or even decades.

The platform is proficient in ingesting data from various sources including APS files, MIB reports, labs, applications, supplementals, Electronic Health Records (EHR), and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) files. By automating the ingestion of these diverse data types, Sixfold eliminates the need for manual document handling by underwriters.

✔️ Refining risk evaluation with a holistic view of medications, treatments, lifestyle choices, and family history

The platform leverages advanced synthesis of adjacent applicant history information, including pertinent family medical histories and lifestyle attributes, to offer a comprehensive understanding of their broader health habits and disease predispositions.

By integrating details from submitted records—such as family diagnoses ("father was diagnosed with melanoma at 63, but was successfully treated")—with insights into exercise routines ("engages in moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and weight lifting"), hobbies ("applicant scuba dives several times per year"), and substance use ("consumes a few beers every few days"), Sixfold provides a holistic view of an applicant's health.

This comprehensive approach enhances the precision of assessments, enabling more informed decisions regarding risk.

✔️ Improving risk decision precision with in-depth analysis of health condition progression 

We are now able to aggregate data related to a condition, including adjacent factors like medication, to chronologically track the comprehensive progression of the condition across multiple data sources. By utilizing detailed health data and its evolution over time, we enable more informed and accurate underwriting decisions.

This approach provides a unique layer of detail, incorporating crucial health information over time, allowing underwriters to quickly grasp risk with relevant context, thereby informing more precise rating and pricing.

✔️ Enhancing fraud detection by identifying inconsistencies across sources

Underwriters are tasked with synthesizing and managing a vast amount of information from lengthy documents, including Attending Physician Statements (APS), self-reported data, laboratory results, and more. An important aspect of analyzing these documents is to identify inconsistencies or discrepancies that could arise from oversight or fraud. Instead of solely relying on underwriters to detect irregularities across diverse documents, Sixfold proactively identifies and flags these discrepancies to the underwriter.

The platform's automated capability to identify problematic areas empowers underwriters to make informed decisions, leading to more accurate pricing of premiums and greater reliability of applicant information, safeguarding both insurers and applicants.

✔️ Expanding traceability with full document and page number sourcing

Our recent achievement of SOC 2 Type 2 certification underscores our commitment to being a responsible AI solution.

In this release, we've taken traceability to the next level by ensuring underwriters have access to complete information sourcing, pinpointing the exact document and page for increased transparency and accuracy.

✔️ Boosting underwriting capacity with upgraded triaging functionality 

Sixfold's latest update introduces a streamlined dashboard experience, designed specifically to empower underwriters to efficiently prioritize applicants who meet their risk tolerance and gracefully set aside those who do not. This effectively addresses the common 'front door issue' in Life & Disability underwriting, which involves managing an overwhelming influx of submissions by automating the pre-processing of applications. Within minutes, Sixfold accurately identifies and aligns applicants with the carrier’s risk criteria, significantly easing the burden of manual sorting and enabling underwriters to focus on the most suitable cases.

Our newest updates equip life & disability underwriters with a complete, clear and accurate health snapshot for every applicant, pinpointing key data points without sacrificing our commitment to compliance and data privacy.‍

Curious to see it all live? 👉 Watch our 20-minute product demo.

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.