Why provenance matters: trust as a foundational layer for agentic AI, submission triage, and beyond

Across every step of the underwriting workflow, from submission intake, to analysis, rate, quote, bind, and issue, data accuracy is fundamental to performance and compliance. But most insurers today have no way of tracking the provenance of their data throughout the policy lifecycle. Every step of the workflow is poorly integrated, if integrated at all. At best, traditional systems pull information out of documents, manually transform it, and then present it to underwriters to manually copy-paste into downstream tools. When a human has to carry the burden of moving data from tool to tool, it’s nearly impossible to ensure accuracy throughout the workflow. There is a major underlying problem of trust in P&C insurance data, and it’s holding the entire industry back. 

As agentic AI takes on more and more of the work of underwriting, the companies that can solve for data provenance will see dramatically better outcomes. Those that don’t will be left behind. To address this issue, we’ve upgraded Federato’s leading underwriting platform and our best-in-class submission triage offering. 

Now, users can identify, validate, and even correct the provenance of data in their underwriting system, down to the source, from anywhere in the workflow. We can untangle complex submission details when information on multiple submissions for separate business lines arrive in a single email, and provide source citations and confidence scores for every field. Whether a data point comes from a submission attachment, the open web, or a third-party integration, an underwriter in Federato can trace and validate this data without leaving their core workflow. 

Combined with Control Tower, this creates a system of trust and control from portfolio-level oversight, to individual risk analysis, all the way down to the individual data points that ultimately govern decisions. This level of transparency and interpretability is critical for bringing AI into insurance with the safety and trust required by the industry.

Submission handling is only the beginning

Submission ingestion is the first link in a data chain that spans the entire policy lifecycle. If that link is weak because the data is shallow, inconsistent, or untraceable, every step that follows is built on unstable ground. The same can be said of policy admin integrations for renewals, or third-party data; garbage in, garbage out is true at every stage in the workflow.

Federato’s offerings are designed to think like an underwriter, to encapsulate the knowledge of the underwriter into a system and apply it with a scale and consistency that is not possible for a human. But in this new world of review-based analysis, where an underwriter works with agents and models, understanding not only the logical flow of the model but also the source information used is critical to creating better business outcomes.

This level of clarity and transparency is a game-changer. Underwriters don’t need to guess where data came from, or verify whether it’s trustworthy; they can audit extractions instantly and focus their time on higher-value tasks.

Complex underwriting at the speed of AI

Because we’ve built provenance tracking into a fully connected underwriting workflow, the structured data that flows seamlessly into every subsequent step never loses its connection to its source document or integration. Risk analysis, appetite evaluation, rating, pricing, and quoting all run on the same shared data model. Underwriters don’t have to re-enter information, verify data, or track down missing context. Everything they need is available in one platform.

This unlocks a new level of speed and consistency. AI agents prioritize submissions, evaluate risk, and prepare draft quotes based on internal strategy and rules. All agentic AI steps are auditable and transparent. Underwriters get full visibility, plus the time back to focus on strategy, nuance, and relationships.

The speed of this process isn’t the only advantage. It’s the consistency, transparency, and quality of the decisions being made. Because every step runs on a unified data foundation, the system avoids the handoff errors, duplication, and rework that plague legacy workflows.

AI can only accelerate underwriting when the underlying data and systems support it. Federato’s platform is built for exactly this, starting with the submission and carrying that value all the way through to bind.

Agentic underwriting in action

So how does this all work when you’re really up and running?

When an underwriter logs in for the day, all they need to do is review and send a list of top-priority opportunities, each with a quote already prepped by AI, with the underlying logic presented for review. The underwriter can focus on leveraging their relationships to create the best outcome for their business and the insured.

This is possible because behind the scenes, the moment a submission lands in the inbox, an AI agent identifies it and any relevant attachments, picks it up instantly, and flags any missing data. If data is missing, it’s automatically requested from the broker. Once that data arrives, the submission record is updated accordingly. If the submission is in-appetite and looks winnable, it’s routed to the analysis stage. AI agents evaluate the risk, check their work, apply internal rules and compliance guardrails, and prepare rating and quoting outputs. If everything looks good, the agent creates a draft quote that the underwriter can review, edit if need be, and send.

A submission-to-quote process that once took days or weeks now happens in minutes, even for complex risks. And at every step of the way, the chain-of-thought reasoning and connection back to the source data is gathered and presented in a way that allows a person and an AI to work together seamlessly. 

This is a huge leap forward from the workflow of the past.

Built for what’s next

We’re just starting to see what the AI-native era of underwriting will look like. According to Federato’s 2025 State of Underwriting Report, 50% of insurers believe AI can improve submission prioritization and efficiency, but only 35% are using it today. With these latest updates, insurers get a foundation to turn their beliefs into reality.