5 signs your underwriting process needs improvement

When underwriting works, it fuels profitable growth. When it doesn’t, the consequences ripple across performance metrics, talent morale, and strategic goals. The challenge is that underwriting dysfunction rarely announces itself with a single failure. It shows up as friction, delay, and misalignment between strategy and execution.

In this blog post, we’ll walk through 5 key signs your underwriting process needs improvement and share actionable steps you can take to address each one.

1. You’re quoting heavily but not binding enough

The symptom: High quote volume, low hit ratio. Your team is busy, but the work isn’t translating into wins.

Why it happens: Many teams rely on volume to make up for poor targeting. Without a clear sense of winnability and appetite, underwriters chase every deal equally, even the ones they’re unlikely to win or that don’t align with the portfolio.

What to do: Score and sort submissions based on appetite fit and historical likelihood to bind. Prioritize daily workflows around the highest-potential opportunities, and reinforce patterns of success with built-in feedback loops tied to quoting behavior and results.

2. Your time to quote is dragging down competitiveness

The symptom: It takes too long to get a quote out the door, even for straightforward deals.

Why it happens: Manual data entry, fragmented systems, submission bottlenecks, and redundant reviews slow down the process.

What to do: Integrate decision support into the quoting workflow. Prioritize automation for low-value, repeatable tasks like data intake, enrichment, and quote assembly. Leverage real-time signals to identify high-winnability submissions early, and embed guidance directly into the tools underwriters already use. Ensure every quote effort is guided by both the likelihood to bind and alignment to strategic goals.

3. Appetite guidelines exist, but they’re not showing up in the work

The symptom: A disconnect between what the business wants to write and what’s actually getting written.

Why it happens: Appetite and strategic goals are often documented but not embedded in the day-to-day workflow. Without system-level support, underwriters often rely on institutional knowledge or intuition.

What to do: Operationalize appetite guidance by embedding real-time signals and tiered routing into underwriting workflows. Ensure appetite criteria are surfaced contextually and consistently, enabling confident selection that supports broader portfolio strategy.

4. Your team spends too much time on poor-fit or unwinnable deals

The symptom: Underwriters are overwhelmed with submissions, but a disproportionate number of those are long shots.

Why it happens: Underwriters may lack structured tools to prioritize submissions based on appetite fit and likelihood to bind, resulting in a resource drain across low-potential deals.

What to do: Incorporate a winnability and appetite scoring model directly into submission intake and triage. Use interaction data, past performance, and referral dynamics to deprioritize low-probability deals early, and refocus attention on business that's both in-appetite and winnable.

5. You can’t connect underwriting activity to portfolio performance

The symptom: Leadership teams struggle to answer basic performance questions. Which types of accounts are improving hit ratios? Which referral patterns correlate with profit?

Why it happens: Underwriting actions and portfolio outcomes live in separate systems or aren’t tracked with enough granularity to make the connection.

What to do: Capture underwriting actions at the point of decision and map them to portfolio outcomes in a unified view. Enable leadership to trace how quoting patterns, referrals, and appetite adherence shape performance over time, and adjust strategies accordingly.

Unlock profitable growth by aligning underwriting action to portfolio goals

If you’re seeing any of these 5 signs, it’s time to take a closer look at your underwriting operations. Teams often struggle not because of a lack of skill, but because they’re working within systems that weren’t designed for today’s speed and complexity. Building alignment between strategy and execution starts with clarity. That means operationalizing goals, driving consistency in decision-making, and embedding real-time feedback loops that connect day-to-day underwriting actions with portfolio outcomes.

Explore how the Federato platform can help your team bring actuarial insights into your underwriting operations. Book a demo or take a self-guided tour of the platform today.

FAQs

1. What does it mean to align underwriting action to portfolio goals?

It means ensuring that every underwriting decision supports the broader strategic objectives of the portfolio—like growth targets, risk appetite, or reinsurance guidelines—rather than relying solely on static rules or individual discretion.

2. Why do traditional systems make this alignment difficult?

Most legacy systems were built around policy transactions, not portfolio strategy. They lack the dynamic data models and feedback loops needed to adapt underwriting activity in real time as goals evolve.

3. What are the signs that our underwriting operations need an overhaul?

Common signs include slow time-to-quote, inconsistent adherence to guidelines, low hit ratios, or a high percentage of time spent on deals that never bind. These issues usually point to misalignment between strategy and execution.

4. How does Federato help solve this problem?

Federato’s platform embeds your unique goals, appetite, and strategy directly into the underwriting workflow. It surfaces real-time insights to help underwriters prioritize the right deals and make faster, more strategic decisions.

5. Can this approach really impact financial performance?

Yes. Customers using Federato have seen measurable gains in hit ratios, reduced quoting times, and a significant increase in bound policies that meet high-appetite criteria—all of which drive more profitable growth.