BRIAN the AI brain giving Allianz’s commercial underwriters a head start

Allianz UK has introduced a cutting-edge generative AI tool – named BRIAN – to transform the way underwriters respond to customer enquiries, enhancing both speed and confidence in decision-making processes.

In an increasingly complex environment, with increased regulatory pressure and emerging risks such as cyber liability and climate change increasing in profile, it’s an interesting time to be an underwriter. Technical excellence is a key part of the Allianz UK strategy, and the underwriting teams can face the challenge of navigating through extensive guidance documents, which can be as lengthy as 600 pages.

Although necessary to produce accurate and insightful answers, this approach can lead to slower response times, impacting the quote experience for brokers and customers.

BRIAN, the Underwriter Guidance Tool, addresses these challenges by simplifying information retrieval. After a successful pilot phase involving nearly 3,000 questions from 190 users, BRIAN is now fully operational, digesting underwriting guides for Property and Casualty (P&C) and Specialty lines, allowing underwriters to ask specific questions and receive concise, accurate responses sourced exclusively from uploaded documents.

Since roll-out in January, there have been more than 13,000 questions asked of BRIAN. This hasn’t only saved time – an estimated 65,000 minutes or 135 working days saved in information gathering – but also gives great insights into what the underwriters are asking and why. Named in honour of a knowledgeable colleague who guided Benjamin Blackie during his early career at Allianz, BRIAN represents a commitment to teamwork and innovation.

BRIAN is particularly beneficial for junior underwriters, accelerating their familiarity with vast documentation and ensuring smoother navigation. The tool is currently used by all Property and Liability Underwriters across Allianz UK commercial offices, with plans to expand to all underwriters by the end of the year.

Benjamin Blackie, Transformation Business Owner at Allianz UK explains:

“What sets BRIAN apart is its dual functionality. It provides a concise answer and includes a direct link to the specific section of the guidance document used to generate the response, allowing underwriters to delve deeper if needed. Typically, our underwriters spend around two hours a week looking for information on internal documents. With BRIAN it takes just seconds.

“This is not about replacing decision-making, but equipping people with better tools to access information they need at the moment they need it. With the extra time saved, underwriters can focus on deeper risk analysis, enhancing customer relationships, refining pricing strategies, and staying updated on emerging market trends and regulatory changes.”

BRIAN is continuously adapting to meet the evolving needs of our underwriters through a collaboration between Allianz UK business, transformation and Central AI team within Ops IT Data function.

“In a remote world with lots of hybrid working, not every underwriter gets to sit next to a senior underwriter every day who just so happens to know where things are – so it’s called BRIAN so every underwriter can have what I had when I first started” concluded Ben.

By reducing inefficiencies and improving decision-making, BRIAN empowers underwriters to make better-informed decisions faster, transforming traditionally cumbersome processes and enhancing agility, accuracy, and confidence in underwriting practices. In doing so, BRIAN aligns with the Allianz UK vision of refining its operations to be more intelligent, robust, and streamlined, ultimately enhancing its ease of collaboration and elevating its capabilities.

Image provided by Allianz

Francesca Kaye