Bridging the Gap: Why Aligning Insurance Underwriting Strategy with Execution Matters More Than Ever
In commercial property and casualty insurance, one of the most persistent challenges is aligning underwriting strategy with real-world execution. While underwriting excellence is still a key driver of carrier performance¹, many organizations struggle to translate strategic vision into consistent daily operations.
This disconnect doesn’t just impact profitability, it erodes trust with trading partners and weakens competitive positioning in an increasingly demanding marketplace. The ability to execute a well-defined insurance underwriting strategy has become a core differentiator—the growing gap between intent and action puts long-term performance at risk.
The Complexity Challenge: Size Matters, But Not How You Think
The difficulty of connecting underwriting strategy with execution varies significantly by organizational size—but not always in the ways you'd expect.
Smaller firms tend to be nimble, adapting quickly to changing market conditions. But they often lack the data-driven infrastructure, automation, and underwriting resources needed to execute consistently across portfolios. Larger organizations, by contrast, have access to robust platforms and deep underwriting expertise, but often move slower due to bureaucratic complexity and legacy systems.
Clarity of underwriting appetite and direction is essential—regardless of whether you’re operating as a carrier, MGA, broker, or agency². In today’s complex and competitive insurance environment, delivering quality service depends on everyone understanding what success looks like and how to achieve it.
For larger entities, connecting strategy and execution often requires major investments in technology, workflow integration, and organizational change management—initiatives that can take 18–24 months to implement and cost millions, with no guaranteed performance lift³. Smaller players face different constraints: limited funding for enterprise tools, leaner teams, and challenges scaling insurance underwriting operations in line with growth.
The result is a paradox. The players most equipped to execute sophisticated strategies often can’t move quickly enough, while the ones who can adapt quickly lack the infrastructure to execute comprehensively.
Building Trading Partner Confidence Through Consistent Execution
Insurance is, and always has been, a relationship-driven industry. Success hinges on trust: trust between carriers and reinsurers, MGAs and capacity providers, brokers and underwriters. And at the core of that trust is one thing—consistent execution.
When insurance underwriting strategies are well-defined but poorly implemented, inconsistency follows. That inconsistency erodes confidence, introduces unnecessary friction, and undermines even the most promising partnerships. Whether it’s fluctuating underwriting appetite, misaligned risk selection, or variable service levels, a lack of executional consistency signals unreliability to trading partners.
While McKinsey’s 2019 study on underwriting is now several years old, its insights remain relevant—and arguably even more critical in today’s market. The central takeaway? Sustainable competitive advantage stems not just from having a great strategy, but from executing that strategy consistently over time.⁴
Note 4
The consequences of misalignment between underwriting strategy and execution are far from theoretical—they directly impact business performance. When trading partners can’t reliably predict how submissions will be evaluated or what a carrier’s true underwriting appetite entails, uncertainty replaces trust. Brokers may begin steering business elsewhere. Reinsurers may price uncertainty into their terms. Even internal teams can lose confidence, creating hesitation and missed opportunities. In a market where insurance underwriting success depends on clear, repeatable decisions, inconsistent execution quickly becomes a competitive liability.
The Measurement Imperative: Moving Beyond General Direction
In today’s commercial insurance landscape, broad strategic vision is no longer enough—especially when it comes to insurance underwriting. Nowhere is this more evident than in the excess and surplus (E&S) lines market, where differentiation often hinges on deep domain expertise and niche appetite. But even in admitted lines, where underwriting targets may be broader, the specific nuances of execution determine the true shape and performance of a portfolio.
A PropertyCasualty360 analysis drives this point home:
“Commercial carriers sometimes fail to take the extra step to detail their business strategy into tangible resources that underwriters can use to make day-to-day underwriting decisions. Failing to recognize the importance in fleshing out high-level strategic directions prevents underwriters from accurately and consistently executing on the strategy.”5
This is why consistent measurement—and the ability to operationalize that measurement—is no longer optional. Consider a real-world example: a carrier launches a new liability product focused on the fast-growing but volatile marijuana industry. They define three tight underwriting boxes to guide eligibility. Within three months, submissions skyrocket—even with a limited rollout. But premium growth lags expectations. A recent agent roundtable reveals mounting frustration. Meanwhile, the underwriting team is operating at full capacity.
Without the right metrics in place, the root cause remains hidden. The carrier may not realize:
Certain producers are submitting from states outside of underwriting appetite, due to unclear education.
Three offices are generating high volumes of off-target submissions, creating drag on underwriting efficiency.
New legislation has opened viable opportunities—but without real-time monitoring, the team can’t pivot to seize them.
This is the crux of modern insurance underwriting success: aligning real-time insights with real-world performance. Measurement enables intentional, informed responses across the value chain. Without it, carriers remain stuck—unable to distinguish whether performance issues stem from strategic misfires or poor execution.
The Modern Telephone Game: Technology's False Promise
For all the advances in digital transformation, many insurance organizations still suffer from a surprisingly old-school problem: communication breakdown. Just like the game of telephone, strategic messages often get distorted as they move across departments, systems, and stakeholders—despite the layers of technology intended to ensure alignment.
This is especially true in insurance underwriting, where success depends on translating strategy into clear, consistent execution. Strategic intent must cascade into specific decision-making criteria, then be embedded in training programs, underwriting guidelines, decision-support tools, and core systems. But when even one link in that chain falters, clarity gives way to confusion.
As PropertyCasualty360 puts it:
“Underwriting guidelines, risk selection tools, pricing models, and escalation processes aim to embed the insurer’s underwriting strategy into day-to-day account decisions. However, underwriters also must have sufficient training to critically analyze accounts and use their judgment in conjunction with these tools and processes.”6
When this translation process fails, the result is inconsistent execution. One underwriter may interpret appetite guidance differently than another. Guidelines may be applied unevenly across territories or lines of business. Critical market feedback may take months to reach decision-makers—if it makes it there at all.
The takeaway? Technology is only as powerful as the alignment it supports. Without intentional communication, consistent training, and feedback loops, even the most advanced systems can amplify—not solve—the disconnect between strategy and execution in insurance underwriting.
The Path Forward: Creating Alignment Through Structure
Connecting underwriting strategy with execution isn’t about more tools—it’s about building the right structure to turn strategy into action across your organization.
Articulate strategic goals into clear, executable guidance.
Translate high-level business objectives into actionable underwriting and marketing strategies. Front-line professionals need more than general direction—they need specific, practical instructions that account for the real-world complexity of insurance underwriting, especially in nuanced or ambiguous situations.
Embed that guidance into daily workflows.
Use training programs, decision-support tools, and escalation processes to bring strategy to life. With AI-driven tools becoming faster and more impactful, organizations must rethink traditional processes to fully capture these opportunities. Execution isn’t just about alignment—it’s about making strategy accessible at the point of decision.
Monitor progress with frequent, focused measurement.
Define KPIs that assess not just outcomes, but alignment—ensuring that underwriting decisions reflect the strategy behind them. Then act on those insights. In a fast-paced market, regular measurement is the only way to adapt, improve, and stay competitive.
In today’s evolving risk landscape, insurance underwriting performance hinges on your ability to align, activate, and adapt your strategy—at scale and with speed.
Conclusion: Strategy Without Execution is Just Aspiration
The gap between strategy and execution is one of the most overlooked risks in insurance underwriting today. It’s also one of the greatest opportunities.
Insurers that bridge this gap gain a sustainable edge—one built on clarity, consistency, and the ability to deliver on what they promise. Those that don’t risk falling further behind in a marketplace that rewards precision and punishes unpredictability.
This isn’t just a technology problem. It’s an organizational one. Closing the gap requires a deliberate, structured approach: clear communication, actionable implementation, and continuous measurement. And above all, leadership that understands that having a strategy isn’t enough—executing it consistently is what drives results.
In a relationship-driven industry like insurance, where confidence and consistency define success, carriers who align underwriting strategy with execution will build deeper trust, stronger partnerships, and long-term advantage. Those who don’t? They’ll remain stuck at the aspiration stage—while the rest of the market moves forward.
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See how others are using data and AI to close the execution gap.
Endnotes
McKinsey & Company. "From art to science: The future of underwriting in commercial P&C insurance." Insurance Practice, February 2019.
Joe Calandro, Jr., Katie Klutts, and Francois Ramette. "Underwriting from strategy to execution." PropertyCasualty360, October 21, 2015.
PwC Financial Services. "Commercial insurance underwriting strategy: The key to high performance." November 2018, page 2.
McKinsey & Company. "From art to science: The future of underwriting in commercial P&C insurance." Insurance Practice, February 2019, page 2.
Joe Calandro, Jr., Katie Klutts, and Francois Ramette. "Underwriting from strategy to execution." PropertyCasualty360, October 21, 2015, page 3.
Joe Calandro, Jr., Katie Klutts, and Francois Ramette. "Underwriting from strategy to execution." PropertyCasualty360, October 21, 2015, page 5.