Accelerated life underwriting is a way of deciding whether to sell someone life insurance, and at what price, from data and models instead of a medical examination. It is also called no-exam or no-medical life insurance. It is used mostly for term life insurance, which pays a fixed amount to the family if the insured person dies within a set number of years.
In traditional life underwriting, the insurer sends a nurse to the applicant, or asks the applicant to visit a clinic. Blood and urine are tested, and the insurer's underwriter reads the doctor's report. This can take three to six weeks, and many applicants give up before it is done.
Accelerated underwriting replaces most of this with data. The applicant answers health questions online. With the applicant's permission, the insurer then checks outside records. In America, these include prescription histories, past insurance applications and driving records. In India, insurers typically check income documents, credit records and past policies. A model built from past policies and past claims reads all of this data. It puts the applicant in one of three groups: accept at the standard price, accept at a higher price, or send the case to a person for a full medical review.
Consider a 32-year-old engineer in Bengaluru who applies online for ₹1 crore of term cover for 30 years. She answers 25 health questions. She does not smoke, has no illnesses and earns a steady salary. The model finds nothing unusual in her records. It accepts her within ten minutes at the standard premium, about ₹12,000 a year. The policy is then created in the insurer's policy administration system.
Not everyone is accepted instantly. Older applicants, very large amounts of cover and applicants with health conditions are usually sent for medical tests. So the model speeds up the simple cases, and people still decide the difficult ones. This is a form of human in the loop.
Digital insurers use this method widely. The policy is sold through digital life insurance distribution software, and it then runs for decades on a life and annuity policy administration system.