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Article by Jonathan Rusby, Director of P&C (EMEA)
The modernization question after Blueprint Two has largely been framed around systems, operating models, and how the London Market evolves from here.
But there is a more personal version of that question, one that is becoming increasingly relevant across managing agents and syndicates.
What happens to underwriting judgment when the people who hold it step back?
A Career's Worth of Knowledge, Rarely Written Down
For many Chief Underwriters, underwriting is not something that can be reduced to a process.
It is built over decades. It is shaped by market cycles, losses, relationships, and instinct. It sits in conversations, in judgment calls, and in the way risks are assessed rather than simply how they are described.
For the most part, it does not live in systems.
The rules that matter most are often unwritten. The nuances that differentiate a good risk from a poor one are internalized, not documented. Even where formal guidelines exist, they tend to reflect the broad shape of underwriting appetite rather than the detail of how decisions are actually made.
That has always been manageable because the market has relied on continuity. Experience has been passed on through mentoring, team structure, and proximity.
But that assumption is starting to shift.
A Structural Transition the Market Cannot Ignore
Across the London Market, many senior underwriting leaders are approaching the latter stages of their careers. These are people who have navigated multiple market cycles, understood how appetite has changed over time, and developed judgment that cannot be replicated quickly.
When they step back, the business does not simply lose a role. It risks losing a way of thinking.
That loss is not always immediate. The business continues to function. Teams adapt. New leaders step in. But over time, something subtle changes. Decisions take longer. Risk selection becomes less consistent. The edge that came from experience becomes harder to define, and harder to replicate.
This is not about capability. It is about continuity.
Why This Matters More Now
In a harder market, that loss can be absorbed. Strong pricing and broad profitability can mask operational and underwriting inconsistency. The impact is there, but it is less visible.
In a softening market, it becomes much more apparent.
When margins tighten and competition increases, the quality and consistency of underwriting decisions matter more. The ability to apply judgment efficiently, and to do so at scale, becomes a source of differentiation.
That is where the challenge becomes more acute. If underwriting excellence sits primarily in individuals, how do you extend it beyond them?
Modernization That Backs Underwriters
This is not about replacing underwriting judgment with technology. It is not about reducing complex risk decisions to a rigid set of rules or removing experienced practitioners from the process.
Those things are neither realistic nor desirable.
Underwriting, particularly in the London Market, will always depend on judgment, relationships, and experience. That is what makes it valuable.
The real question is different. How do you ensure that the knowledge accumulated over a career does not leave with the individual?
That is where INSTANDA's role needs to be understood clearly. It is not a technology layer designed to replace underwriting expertise. It is an operational core that allows that expertise to be captured, structured, applied, refined, and scaled inside the business.
From Tacit Knowledge to Operational Capability
The answer for a growing number of firms is not documentation, but translation.
Not writing everything down, but identifying the patterns within how decisions are made and embedding those patterns into how the business operates.
That might mean:
- Defining where underwriting rules can be applied consistently
- Capturing decision thresholds that are currently implicit
- Structuring data so that risk can be assessed in a more repeatable way
- Building workflows that reflect how underwriters actually think, not just how processes are designed
- Creating escalation pathways that bring experienced judgment into the right decisions at the right time
Done well, this does not reduce the role of the underwriter. It changes where their expertise is applied.
In that model, experience is not lost. It becomes embedded.
Critically, it also becomes easier to evolve. Appetite changes, market conditions shift, new classes emerge, and regulatory expectations move. The firms best positioned for the future are those able to adapt underwriting logic quickly without rebuilding operational infrastructure each time.
That is what turns underwriting expertise into a long-term business capability rather than a point-in-time advantage.
What This Looks Like in Practice
The firms making progress here are not attempting to capture everything at once. They are starting with specific areas where the impact is most immediate.
For example, one managing agent looking at a specialist line identified that a large proportion of submissions followed a relatively consistent pattern. Historically, these were still being manually reviewed because the nuance sat in how underwriters interpreted the risk.
Instead of trying to codify every decision, the firm worked with its senior underwriters to define where there was clear agreement on acceptable risk characteristics, thresholds, and exceptions. Those inputs were then used to shape a more structured intake and triage process.
The result was not that underwriting became automated. It was that underwriting became more focused.
Routine risks could be handled more efficiently. Exceptions were surfaced more clearly. And, critically, the logic behind those decisions was no longer held purely in individuals.
How INSTANDA Makes That Operational
This is the point at which technology either becomes useful or becomes a distraction.
For underwriting knowledge to endure, it cannot sit in a document, a spreadsheet, or a separate AI tool outside the workflow. It has to become part of how business is actually written.
That is where INSTANDA comes in.
INSTANDA allows firms to translate underwriting knowledge into configurable operating logic that can evolve as markets, products, distribution models, and appetite change. Appetite, rules, referrals, data requirements, pricing inputs, approval pathways, and exception handling can be built into the workflow itself and adapted as the business evolves.
Because the platform is configurable and API-enabled, firms can adjust underwriting logic, workflows, and operating models over time while integrating with the wider insurance ecosystem where required. The objective is not simply connection. It is the ability to continuously adapt without rebuilding.
AI is relevant here, but only when it is embedded into that operational flow. Its value is not in presenting itself as a separate feature. Its value is in helping with the work around underwriting: ingesting and structuring data, supporting risk analysis, identifying exceptions, and ensuring the right cases reach the right people.
More importantly, AI should operate within business-controlled workflows, authority structures, and underwriting principles. Its role is to support execution and consistency while leaving firms in control of how decisions are made, governed, and evolved over time.
That is how underwriting judgment is protected. Not by trying to automate it away, but by making sure the expertise behind it continues to influence the way the business operates.
The Question of Legacy
For Chief Underwriters approaching the later stages of their careers, this creates a different kind of decision.
Not just how to deliver performance over the next cycle, but how to leave the business stronger than they found it.
That legacy is not defined by systems alone. It is defined by whether the thinking, judgment, and discipline developed over years continues to shape the business after they step back.
This is where the right operational core matters. A configurable platform does not replace the experienced underwriter. It gives that underwriter a way to leave an imprint on the business: in rules, workflows, decision logic, escalation pathways, and the operating model that the next generation inherits.
Just as importantly, it gives future teams the ability to adapt that operating model as conditions change, ensuring expertise is not only preserved but continually refined.
A More Deliberate Way Forward
The London Market has always evolved through the strength of its people.
That will not change.
What is changing is the need to ensure that the knowledge those people have built does not remain transient. It needs to become part of the structure of the business, not just the individuals within it.
This does not require wholesale reinvention. It requires a more deliberate approach to how underwriting knowledge is captured, shared, and operationalized. It requires a recognition that experience is an asset that can be extended, adapted, and operationalized, not simply inherited.
And, increasingly, it requires firms to act while that experience is still accessible.
Start the Conversation
If you are thinking about how to retain and extend underwriting expertise before it leaves the business, INSTANDA works with managing agents to turn that knowledge into operational capability: configurable, adaptable, API-enabled, built for specialty complexity, and designed to preserve judgment while helping it work at scale.
If this challenge feels familiar, we'd be happy to share how firms are preserving underwriting expertise while creating greater consistency, scalability, and adaptability.
