Behind Applied’s recent acquisition of Cytora

Digitizing the entire policy lifecycle is the driving force behind Applied Systems’ recent acquisition of Cytora, says Applied Systems Canada’s senior vice president and general manager Steve Whitelaw.

The strategic acquisition of Cytora was announced Sept. 9. Cytora is a configurable, generative AI-powered platform that enables carriers, MGAs, and brokers to digitize their intake and streamline the full policy lifecycle — from submission to claims servicing, mid-term adjustments, endorsements, and renewals, Applied says in a press release.

“We’re trying to digitize the full lifecycle from submissions to quotes, to servicing, [and] to back-end accounting,” Whitelaw told Canadian Underwriter during an interview at Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario’s (IBAO) annual conference in Niagara Falls last month. “What we’re going to market with…is the capability to have a digital submission to go into the insurer, regardless of the class of business or complexity.

“For a broker, that means not having to key in data. [Brokers are] supported by a single workflow to get them to the submission point, potentially, and receive a quote using the same workflow, regardless of whether an insurer will return that quote in real time, or whether it’ll return it in an hour, a day or a week,” he says. “From the broker’s perspective, it’s the same.”

Real-time quoting is available for 12 commercial lines of business, representing the lines for which Applied is certified by the Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO). Even if an insurer decides the risk is too complex for a real-time quote, for example, nothing changes for the broker.

Removing friction

“Same process for the broker, which is massive…if you think about the current process, where they’re going to different portals and entering [the data] all in [manually]…,” Whitelaw says. “We know that commercial [insurance] is historically fraught with friction, manual processes, and multiple data entry into multiple sources.”

The Cytora platform takes information from disparate data sources — both structured (e.g., CSIO forms) and unstructured sources (documents, PDFs, Excel and CSV files, emails, images, voice files, etc.) — “digitizes it, and feeds into insurers’ policy admin systems,” Whitelaw says.

It can also scan data sources to validate information as it’s coming in. For example, a submission may indicate a business is a general retail store, but it may be a cannabis store.

The platform allows brokers to customize. They can add new data fields or manage the platform themselves without needing to rely on Applied. “[That] differentiates from some others [in that] if you’re [using the platform on an] ongoing [basis], you’re basically signing up for an ongoing service contract…”

The tech vendor is also building AI into its entire platform with some specific use cases, Whitelaw reports. For example, AI can be used to read or summarize an email and suggest actions. “It saves you time from having to open the email, read it, find my policy in the system,” he said.

AI can also be used to examine why a renewal increased in price or to compare premiums from one policy to another. This could potentially indicate if a customer is at risk of shopping around for another policy.

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In addition, Applied is revamping its quoting platform to embed quoting right inside of Epic, its broker management system. “Think about your experiences outside of insurance, where everything happens now. But in insurance, it always feels like your waiting,” Whitelaw says. “We’re setting ourselves up with our insurer partners to be able to do that bind and issuance in real-time.”

The tech vendor is also looking to free up time during the accounting process, by reconciling accounts payable and accounts receivable information in the back end of Epic through Applied Pay. This allows a broker to collect premiums any way the person or business wants to pay, with options like EFT, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

“It’s meeting the customers where they’re at with respect to all their other experiences with how they pay for products and services,” Whitelaw says.

Jason Contant

Jason has been an award-winning journalist with Canadian Underwriter for more than a decade, including the past three years as associate editor and, before that, as digital editor for seven years.