How many new customers are you losing to underwriting friction? And how much revenue is leaking from a claims process that can’t detect modern fraud?
For many insurers, these two core functions remain slow, manual, and disconnected. In the high-growth APAC market, this gap is no longer just an operational headache—it’s a direct threat to profitability and customer loyalty.
In high-growth markets across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, speed and accuracy are non-negotiable competitive advantages. Yet, many insurers still rely on outdated systems that treat underwriting as a manual data-gathering exercise and claims as a paperwork bottleneck. This disconnect creates a poor customer experience and drives up the critical metric of operational cost—a challenge that requires an intelligent, end-to-end solution.
Underwriting: The Hidden Cost of Manual Processes
The initial assessment of risk is critical, but too often, it’s bogged down by human intervention. Underwriting involves the tedious tasks of data gathering, cross-referencing external databases, and manually calculating risk factors. Research consistently shows that underwriters can spend as much as 40% of their time on non-core administrative tasks.
This reliance on non-core activities creates several negative outcomes:
- Slow Time-to-Policy: Lengthy manual reviews delay policy issuance, frustrating modern consumers who expect seamless, digital onboarding. This friction causes potential policyholders to abandon the process
- Inconsistent Risk Pricing: Reliance on limited data sets or subjective human judgment leads to inconsistent pricing and portfolio risk accumulation.
- Missed Growth Opportunities: By tying up highly skilled underwriters with administrative work, insurers miss opportunities to focus on complex, high-value cases or innovative new product development.
Digital transformation must begin at the point of risk assessment, using AI to instantly process data, flag anomalies, and automate the decision for straight-through processing.
Claims: Inefficiency, Fraud, and the Moment of Truth
The claims process is the ultimate moment of truth, yet it frequently fails to deliver a positive experience. Manual reviews lead to opaque processes, slow settlements, and high rates of customer dissatisfaction. An Accenture report found that 31% of claimants were not fully satisfied with their experience, often citing settlement speed as the primary issue. In Southeast Asia, where over 40% of consumers prefer digital transactions, this gap is damaging trust.
Beyond customer friction, the back-office faces severe leakage and fraud challenges. Manual reviews are vulnerable to human error, resulting in inaccurate payouts—a silent drain on profitability. As reported by Insurance Asia, the APAC region experienced a concerning 22% year-on-year increase in fraudulent claims in 2023. These sophisticated schemes are nearly impossible for human teams to detect at scale, making an AI-powered integrity layer a necessity.
Igloo’s AI Insurtech Platform: Transforming Risk and Resolution
Igloo addresses these dual challenges with an AI insurtech platform that integrates sophisticated AI agents across the entire insurance value chain. This end-to-end approach fundamentally redesigns the core system.
AI in Underwriting: Speed, Accuracy, and Growth
Before a policy is even issued, Igloo’s AI agents work to:
- Intelligent Routing: Complex or high-value cases are automatically flagged and routed to the most appropriate human underwriter, ensuring their expertise is applied where it delivers the highest return.
- Fraud Prevention (Pre-Claim): Algorithms scan application data for suspicious patterns and inconsistencies that often signal future fraud risk, allowing for proactive intervention before a policy is issued.
AI in Claims: Automation and Integrity
Once a claim is filed, the same intelligence powers a seamless resolution:
- Automated FNOL & Triage: An AI agent instantly verifies policy status and intelligently routes the claim, clearing simple, low-risk cases for straight-through processing.
- Document Processing (OCR/NLP): This agent eradicates the paperwork bottleneck. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), it extracts, classifies, and validates critical information from receipts, damage reports, and medical documents with 90%+ accuracy.
- Adjudication and Settlement: The Adjudication AI analyzes the verified data against policy rules and predictive models to recommend a clear decision. Once approved, the Settlement AI automatically and accurately calculates the final amount and triggers digital payment.
Quantifiable Impact: The Metrics That Matter
The end-to-end AI framework delivers tangible results, setting new standards for efficiency and risk mitigation in the APAC insurance market.
| Core Metric | Igloo AI Engine Result | Significance |
| End-to-End Claim Cycle Time | Reduced by 60% on average | Customer-Centric Transformation: Converts a weeks-long ordeal into settlement in days or hours, dramatically boosting customer satisfaction and reducing churn. |
| Fraud Detection Rate | 50–90% success rate | Risk Mitigation: Proactively identifies high-risk claims, preventing substantial financial leakage and strengthening actuarial soundness before any payouts are processed. |
| Average Pending Per Claim (APEC) | Reduced to 0–1 day | Efficiency & Backlog Elimination: Removes painful waiting periods and backlogs, increasing adjuster capacity and eliminating common sources of customer dissatisfaction. |
| SOP Compliance Rate | Near-perfect 99% | Audit & Governance Certainty: Guarantees unwavering consistency and rigid adherence to internal governance and regulatory standards across all digital and human touchpoints. |
The Essential Shift to Unified Profit
Artificial intelligence is the proven foundation for the next generation of efficient, customer-centric insurance. By removing friction from underwriting and eliminating leakage from claims, Igloo’s end-to-end AI insurtech platform creates a powerful win-win for insurers and their policyholders.
It positions carriers to grow their digital distribution channels with confidence, knowing their core systems deliver a rapid, high-accuracy experience.Exploring unified AI for your underwriting and claims operations?
Connect with Igloo’s Tech Solutions team to discuss how practical AI implementations can be tailored to your specific distribution model and regulatory environment across APAC.
