Exclusive: AllDigital launches AI tool for MGAs, carriers to help automate underwriting

By James Thaler

June 23 - (The Insurer) - AllDigital Specialty is launching a new AI tool for MGAs and carriers which can be trained on their own underwriting data and is designed to enhance underwriter productivity and allow staff to more rapidly deliver bindable quotes.

AllDigital was launched by former Munich Re, Willis Re and QBE North America executive Athula Alwis in 2019 as an MGA with admitted and non-admitted financial lines offerings.

The company confirmed the AI tool’s imminent launch. The success of the tool in enabling AllDigital to underwrite $36 million in premium in-house as an MGA in 2024, with plans to write $50 million in 2025, has validated the effectiveness and viability of the model, the company said.

AllDigital has been developing and training its AI models on its admitted portfolio since 2021 and on its non-admitted Lloyd’s portfolio since the fourth quarter in 2024.

“So what we want to do next is take that to the market,” Alwis said in an interview.

“There are MGAs without AI resources. There are insurers without internal AI teams. What we are saying is, let us take your data and train an AI system,” Alwis said.

“So if you cannot find enough underwriters to grow your book, or if you think it's too expensive to hire underwriters, you can basically double or triple the size of your portfolio with the same team by using technology,” he noted.

“Basically, we are saying it's not to replace” having humans involved, Alwis said, but “to augment underwriting support under any experience, through technology, through AI”.

“That's what we’re offering. So if you have $10 million of business with three underwriters today and you want to get to $30 million, you can use an AI model to take 80% of the work away and let those three focus on marketing and growth and strategy,” he added.

“You can get to a $30 million book from $10 million at a much lower cost structure and much faster. It's hard to find underwriters, by the way, there's a talent shortage out there,” he explained.

The offering is independent of AllDigital’s financial lines products that it offers as an MGA, with Alwis highlighting the tech product as an additional revenue stream uncorrelated with the underwriting cycle.

The company, which labels itself as an insurtech, is cash flow-positive and recently raised a modest amount of debt to support additional investments in the firm’s infrastructure.

Alwis said it would take about four months to train the model on a potential MGA or carrier client’s data and that after a two month pilot period it can have an augmented underwriting system set up for clients in the span of six months.

He described the front end of the AI tool AllDigital has developed as user-friendly and said that it would come with an application server and database.

The founder also said AllDigital would only serve product segments in which it does not operate and provide written guarantees to customers that it would not enter any competing markets.

“We can do it in writing. We are very transparent. We said we'll stay wholesale-focused and we have done that for four years. We'll say, ‘Okay, you're using our technology company and (our) MGA tech-enabled management liability MGA business will not enter that segment.'”