In wholesale insurance, the real transformation may not be technological at all. It may be organizational.
At Wholesure, the focus is not on inventing the next platform. The focus is on building an operating model that can adapt to rapid technological change without weakening underwriting discipline. For Brian Fischer (pictured), who has spent 40 years in the industry, the defining feature of this era is velocity.
After four decades in insurance, Fischer said the current wave of change stands apart from previous cycles. “I started off on the carrier side of the business, and I know that carriers have huge legacy system issues that they have to overcome, and many of them are. But I do not know that I have seen anything in our industry with such a rapid change from a technology perspective,” he said.
Long before artificial intelligence dominated industry conversation, Wholesure’s technology efforts were centred on improving distribution access. “We were early adopters of online rating platforms that enabled our distribution partners to access our products and markets quickly and efficiently,” Fischer said.
Today, attention has moved deeper into workflow, particularly within contract binding and submission intake. “We continue to look for opportunities to reduce friction, particularly in the contract binding segment, specifically in the submission intake process,” he said.
The firm is deploying third-party analytics alongside AI to enhance underwriting performance in risk selection. Fischer framed the goal in operational terms rather than technological ones.
“This allows us to free up time and resources to drive the best decisions and allows our team to work on solving problems and driving solutions with our agency partners,” he said.
The intention is not replacement, but redeployment – shifting experienced professionals away from repetitive processes and toward complex risk decisions.
For Fischer, selecting a tool is straightforward compared with embedding it effectively.
“Integration is probably the most difficult in the early stages of the engagement of the project,” he said. “If we do not go through the things that we just talked about, if we do not bring them in, then we are starting from behind.”
To prevent that lag, Wholesure involves brokerage, contract binding and technology teams at the outset of initiatives. “If we can get their buy-in as we start an initiative, as it is being scoped out, we believe that those outcomes will be more meaningful,” he said.
That structure allows for adjustments in real time. “If the team finds something that does not quite work, they recommend a change or a tweak. It is important that we are able to iterate and make those changes quickly,” he said.
The urgency reflects a broader industry dynamic. “If we started on something last year, it is very likely the technology has changed in the last 365 days,” he said. “There is something new every day.”
He recently cited the acceleration of artificial intelligence models as an example. “I heard somebody make a quote the other day that, based on their review of AI, those AI models are getting refreshed about every two weeks. So can you keep pace with those changes?” he said.
In that environment, transformation is no longer episodic. It becomes continuous.
Beyond AI, Fischer pointed to the widening availability of actionable data. “Nowadays, you can go online, answer some questions, and when you get to the end of that process, if everything qualifies, you input your credit card information, pay for your policy, and the policy will be delivered to you either through that application or via email. Nobody was doing that 10 years ago, and today it is more common,” he said.
He also described how third-party services can return meaningful underwriting insight from minimal inputs.
“We think that we would be able to do some of our work simply with someone’s cell phone number. If I have your cell phone number, there are a number of third-party services that I would be able to hit to pull back enough information to offer some lines of coverage,” he said.
From aerial imagery that tracks roof conditions to dashboards that compress 30 or 45 minutes of manual analysis into minutes, underwriting information is increasingly immediate.
“There is all sorts of stuff that has happened from a technology perspective,” he said. “It is fascinating. And who knows what they come up with next?”
Looking ahead five years, Fischer said technology will be a differentiator in wholesale distribution. “I do not see how it cannot be,” he said.
But the distinction, in his view, will not rest solely on who adopts the newest application. It will depend on which firms can integrate tools without compromising underwriting standards, and which can adapt structures and workflows as quickly as the technology evolves.
In a market defined by compression of time and expansion of data, wholesale’s advantage may not lie in invention. It may lie in building organizations steady enough to absorb constant change while preserving the discipline that underpins risk selection.
