ITC Connect Las Vegas, day 1

Daniel Hermansson of Pacific Life, Brett Laker of UnderwriteMe and Kelly Davis of EXL speak in a panel on life insurance underwriting at ITC Connect in Las Vegas, October 31, 2023.

ITC Connect in Las Vegas continued Oct. 31 with a session sponsored by Celent on underwriting life insurance. Executives from Pacific Life and UnderwriteMe spoke about how the insurer’s backing of the technology provider helped its operations, as did executives from TruStage, a life insurer, and EXL, the insurtech management consulting company, discussing their partnership.

Pacific Life sought a way for employees and employers to be able to do more themselves as part of the process of underwriting life insurance, according to Daniel Hermansson, AVP, corporate strategy at Pacific Life. The firm needed a “rules engine that could capture the vast majority of cases,” he said.

The challenge that UnderwriteMe had was to “get risk assessed without going through risk requirements,” said Brett Laker, head of North America at UnderwriteMe.

TruStage, for its part, needed more technological sophistication and API-based systems. EXL presented them a solution that could be modified to meet changing needs, compatible any integrated apps, said Kelly Davis, senior AVP, new business and underwriting innovation at EXL.