Assured Allies · Digital Underwriting
Turning a 10-day clinical assessment
into a 30-minute video call
When a senior applies for long-term care insurance, someone has to assess their health. We replaced weeks of paperwork and phone calls with one video call they take from home.
Where it started
The MVP proved the underwriting could be done online, but it was built without a designer and was very basic on both sides: not a product yet.
On the applicant side it was a video-call interface with some written instructions. On the other side sat the Underwriting Ally — Assured Allies’ name for the trained assessor who runs the session. What she had was a short, basic form with no hierarchy and no visual guidance, hard enough to follow that it took the team days to practice. She was jumping between the call, a thin form, protocol docs, and handwritten scores. At the end of each session she would carry on filling in the form to finish the applicant’s scoring.
Seniors coming to these sessions had to get through one safely and successfully even if they had never used anything like it before.
What it produced
- Time to a risk class
10+ days, industry normOne ~30-minute session
32-minute average, under 40 minutes guaranteed.
- Session satisfaction
94%
Measured on the session experience itself.
- Sessions completed
2,000+
Scale rather than impact. Sales drove the volume. What it shows is the interface carrying real load, with real people, on real calls.
- Underwriting Ally workspace
~10 tabs, handwritten notesOne app
- The Ally's assessment form
Written up after the sessionFinished inside the call
Scores and notes go in live, while the applicant is still on screen. Nothing reconstructed from memory afterwards.
- Applicant-facing screens
One loop, reused for every task
More than ten tasks, all on the same rhythm: intro, then instructions → prepare → record twice, then done. The applicant never learns a second screen, and never touches more than one button.
Session time, satisfaction, and volume are published by Assured Allies.
Cognitive and physical tasks
This is Assured Digital Underwriting. It scores the applicant’s health risk, and that score is a crucial part of the actuarial decision. Memory and thinking tasks, then standing, walking, and balance, all scored against a protocol. The applicant gets up, walks several feet from the laptop, sits back down. Someone has to watch that happen, or an underwriter cannot sign off on the data.
Limitations
HIPAA and insurance regulation meant I could never sit in on a real session or watch a recording of one. So I worked with the Underwriting Ally team for their findings. Every new version went through internal testing sessions they ran, and they sent the feedback back before anything launched live. I also gathered what they brought from the sessions themselves, and from a questionnaire applicants could fill out afterwards.
I also got what I needed from the Product Owner, who was in constant contact with that team. She had been an Underwriting Ally herself, so she knew the session from the inside.
Who runs the call
One live session, both sides synchronized. The Underwriting Ally moves the applicant from step to step. She is already on the call and she already knows the protocol, so she should be the one driving.
Someone standing across the room from their laptop cannot navigate anything, and there is nobody there to keep the session on protocol. An async flow the applicant works through alone would not work.
One task at a time
The screen only ever shows whatever exercise is happening right now, so the session keeps its rhythm.
How a session runs
How a session starts
The applicant lands on a welcome, then allows the camera and microphone. The check sets the shot: a medium frame with the hands crossed for some questions, the whole body for the physical tasks. The Underwriting Ally joins on video and observes them through the task. Memory is the first task.
Introduction
Camera and microphone
Identification
Memory exercise
Inside a single exercise
What the applicant sees
The applicant never has to decide anything. Learning the software was never supposed to be part of the assessment.
Instructions
Full height
Recording
What the Underwriting Ally sees
The same chair stands from the other side. Everything she used to hunt for is in one place now. Every second she spends looking for something is a second she is not watching the person she is there to score. This is the one screen I am allowed to show, so take it as an example rather than a tour.
Ally workspace
How it turned out
It became the underwriting session for Bridge, EquiTrust’s hybrid long-term care and annuity contract. An agent schedules the session, the two sides run it together, and a risk class comes back. The part that mattered most to the people doing the work is that the Underwriting Ally finishes her scoring inside the call now instead of after it, which was the bottleneck we started with.