THE CUSTOMER
A nationwide insurance underwriter specializing in workers' compensation and commercial lines across multiple brands.
The Situation
The company and its large brand portfolio, serviced through a massive broker and agent network, was being held back by their dependence on legacy document intake processes. Manual submission handling created bottlenecks, slowing quote turnaround, frustrating agents, and consuming underwriting resources better focused on risk assessment.
The Challenge
Hundreds of submission packets poured in daily via emails from brokers and agents, all containing numerous attachments in wildly inconsistent formats – including ACORD forms, loss runs, experience rating modification worksheets, payroll schedules, and narrative documents. Each submission required manual separation, interpretation, and data entry into multiple systems before underwriters could even begin their work. The company’s legacy intake solution couldn't keep pace.
Document variability overwhelmed the system, inhibiting straight-through processing, which created a cascade effect of slow quote turnaround times, mounting backlogs, and an agent experience that didn't endangered the carrier’s strong reputation for excellent service.
Underwriting teams spent hours extracting and validating data instead of evaluating risk. Leadership needed automation capable of handling high document volumes, integrated seamlessly with Guidewire and their other platforms, supported predictive analytics, and improved submission quality without disrupting critical workflows.
The stakes were clear. Without a scalable submission intake solution, the carrier’s growth ambitions would be constrained by its limited operational capacity. They needed technology that could rapidly and accurately pre-fill missing information, eliminate manual touchpoints, and deliver capabilities as their business evolved.
The Solution
Roots deployed a submission intake AI Agent – powered by InsurGPT™, Roots’ proprietary insurance AI model – designed to eliminate manual friction at every step. The system ingests agent emails, automatically classifies documents regardless of format variations, and extracts structured ACORD data fields directly into a usable XML for downstream processing.
InsurGPT™ made quick work of supplemental documents, loss runs, schedules, and non-standard forms that traditionally required the most manual effort. It recognizes and classifies over 70 different document types, adjusts data capture requirements and approach based on the document type, and even captures data from document layouts the system has never seen before. The Roots AI model learns continuously, improving accuracy with each submission processed.
Only true exceptions, which did not pass customer configured confidence thresholds, route to human review. Once validated, extracted data flows directly into underwriting systems and Guidewire, ready for immediate use. No re-keying. No duplicate entry. No delays.
The Roots Platform scaled as the carrier grew, accommodating volume surges without additional staffing while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to changing business needs. Processes that previously required extensive manual coordination now happen automatically, allowing underwriting teams to focus on what they do best: evaluating risk and serving agents.
The Impact
Since deploying Roots AI Agents, the company’s submission processing volume doubled via automated workflows – all without increasing staffing requirements.- Thousands of hours saved annually and counting: with straight-through processing that dramatically reduced required manual touchpoints.
- Average submission handling time reduced to under a minute: where documents previously required extensive manual review and rekeying of data.
- 90%+ data accuracy: to strengthen underwriting decision confidence and to eliminate costly and disruptive rework.
- Automated processing volume doubled: without an increase in headcount costs.
Conclusion
The carrier transformed its submission intake operations from a resource-intensive bottleneck into a scalable competitive advantage. By eliminating manual data handling, they freed underwriting teams to focus on analysis and agent relationships while positioning the organization for continued growth. With expanded automation now underway, they are accelerating their automation roadmap to commercial lines and are building the connected, intelligent underwriting experience to power their next decade of growth and market expansion.