A digitized future for surety: Efficiency, accuracy and trust

Surety hasn’t always been synonymous with the idea of technological advancement but it has evolved from a highly manual and paper-based industry to one that incorporates digital technologies. The surety industry is leveraging technology in new ways to facilitate underwriting, simplify bond processing, and automate workflows. The pen-and-paper era of our industry is long gone. Now, digitized processes offer accuracy and efficiency in ways that haven’t previously been seen.

Despite economic uncertainty, business is booming for industries that rely on surety bonds, including construction, freight and automotive. That means if you’re trying to get ahead of your competition, paper contracts and repetitive data entry are holding your business back. Businesses that utilize cloud-based solutions to increase their efficiency report increased sales performance, customer engagement, operational advantages, and a boost in employee productivity. It’s clear that the surety industry stands to benefit from trusting and embracing a digital transformation.

There’s a significant opportunity for digitized efficiency in the handling of surety bond information. When a broker has to enter data multiple times in a single system, send it to the carrier who then enters in the same information, not only is this process time consuming on both sides, there is ample opportunity for errors to be introduced into the process. In lower-dollar volume transactional bonds that require information to be submitted multiple times on each end of the process, it’s not always cost-effective in those surety transactions. By using digital solutions and having agencies and brokers that trust in a digitized process and technology that creates efficiency, it reduces friction in the process and allows brokers, agents and carriers to do more with the labor time saved from repeatedly keying in contract data.

A digital platform allows insureds to connect with brokers in real-time to save time and money. It simplifies the process of connecting to brokers and managing contracts in one location. With the digitization of business, everything is happening at a new, faster pace. Carriers and brokers can gain a deeper understanding of their customers and gain new insights based on analytics. Automating time-consuming offline processes internally and with clients helps firms improve efficiency and workflows by reducing and eliminating time-consuming manual processes. Workflow management is streamlined, underwriting becomes automated, and sales productivity increases. As a result, newly available resources can be devoted to strategic marketing, forecasting, and portfolio management. Carriers, brokers, and their clients all benefit from it.

For an industry that’s been around for well over a century, how we operate doesn’t have to remain the same. This is only the beginning of digitization in surety and it will most definitely evolve from here. But as long as trust between agents, brokers, and carriers persists at the core of the work we do, the surety industry will thrive across all sectors, into the future.

Bryce Christensen is the vice president of Surety Sales, Americas for Tinubu, a global software company providing an end-to-end platform for insurers, brokers, agents and their customers.

See also:

• Surety bonds 101: The basics and what you need to know
• Why construction firms must embrace digital bonding and surety
• Small commercial insurance accounts are surety prospects