Manual Submissions are Disappearing: Carriers Embedded in Agency Workflows Will Be the Ones Left Standing.

A new way of trading risk is here. Within four weeks of announcing our new agentic submissionless experience, the three largest admitted commercial lines carriers in the U.S. and five leading independent agencies signed as anchor partners, with more in line to sign up behind them.  

This momentum has proven the need for commercial insurance to be disrupted. Commercial risk transfer traditionally starts with a submission: an agent deciding to submit new business or remarket a renewal, gathering the risk information, and a PDF landing in a queue. Days may pass before an underwriter sees the account.  

For brokers, the manual process lacks transparency and takes too long. For carriers, it results in higher-than-necessary expense ratios and lost business. A study commissioned by Applied indicated that this friction prevents over one third of submissions received by carriers from being reviewed by an underwriter.

From manual workflows to digital risk flows 

AI-powered risk digitization, like that provided by Cytora, begins to alleviate this problem. Rather than risk information sitting in a queue, waiting to be transcribed, Cytora triages the submission and digitizes the relevant risk information. If information is missing, Cytora agents trigger follow-up or execute third-party enrichment workflows. If follow-up information is received, Cytora updates the submission information for underwriter review.  

This removes time and uncertainty from the submission process, which initiates a virtuous cycle between broker and carrier. Carriers get complete submissions faster and therefore return quotes faster. Quotes that are returned faster tend to bind more frequently. When a carrier consistently demonstrates that it is transparent and prompt, it begins to receive more submissions. We see all of these in our Cytora deployments:  

• Travelers are quoting competitors' renewals in the AMS

• Zurich moved intake straight-through processing from 10% to 95%

• Markel saw 113% uplift in gross written premium per full-time employee

These benefits accrue to carriers and brokers regardless of the technology that brokers are using but Applied is attacking this problem more comprehensively than that.  

What does it mean for a carrier to be embedded in agency workflows? 

Applied technology sits on both sides of the risk transfer process. In addition to Cytora’s carrier technology, our agency management systems power most independent agencies in the U.S. Agency management systems matter for two reasons:  

1. Risk data lives in the AMS. Carriers need this data to evaluate risk 

2. Brokers’ workflows occur in the AMS. Carriers want to be front-of-mind and meet brokers where they are. 

Imagine a broker using Applied Epic® sends a submission to two carriers, one powered by Cytora and one not. The Cytora-powered carrier will first receive the submission and digitize it with Cytora. With Epic® connectivity, it will also immediately reveal back to the broker the data that is missing from the submission, allowing the broker to trigger workflows to collect the missing information.  

When that data is received and routed to the proper downstream channel, the subsequent quote will be placed back into the AMS, in the workflow of the agent.  Meanwhile, the other submission sits in a queue, waiting to be evaluated (or not). Which carrier do you think will win that risk? Which carrier will receive more submissions? 

Submissionless and email-to-quote

Submissionless takes this concept and amplifies it further, by allowing brokers to remarket policies coming up for renewal, replacing the manual process with a seamless and automated process that lands the remarketed policy at the desired carrier. It’s a new way of risk trading that uses agentic AI to enable automatic, carrier-ready quoting, without agencies and brokers ever sending a formal submission.  

Last month, we announced this capability with Travelers as our first anchor partner. As Greg Toczydlowski, Executive Vice President and President of Business Insurance at Travelers, said at the time:As Greg Toczydlowski, Executive Vice President and President of Business Insurance at Travelers, said at the time:
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"Applied shares our commitment to using AI to simplify the commercial insurance transaction. Delivering renewal quotes before remarketing begins lets our agents and brokers spend less time on process and more time advising customers, which is a win for the customer, for our distribution partners and for us. The capability also plays to our strengths — the visibility into a distribution partner's full renewal portfolio combined with our data, analytics and product breadth gives us a meaningful competitive advantage in putting it to work."

Submissionless doesn’t just deliver efficiency. Submissionless establishes the carrier as the easiest to work with.  

Submissionless is just one example of how carriers are using Cytora to meet brokers where they are and become the easiest partners to work with. Applied is also releasing agentic email-to-quote capabilities. This will allow carriers to automatically return quotes for submissions received via email, accelerating the quoting process and improving win rates on email-submitted business.

So what does this mean for carriers?

The carriers that are moving fastest in this space are the ones treating AI readiness as a distribution strategy, not a back-office upgrade. That means investing now in the data connections and workflows that let them see a renewal coming and act on it before an agent ever lifts a finger. The window to be early is still open. It won’t stay open indefinitely.

Renewals are the highest-volume, most consistent workflow in commercial insurance — and for most of the industry’s history, one of the most manual. That’s the opportunity in front of us. In the next 12 months, the carriers writing the most profitable commercial business will be the ones agents can reach with the least friction. At Applied, in collaboration with our carrier and agency partners, we’re building the capabilities that redefine how risk flows.

If you’re a carrier thinking about what AI readiness means in practice, I’d welcome the conversation.

Michael Streit is President of Applied Carrier.

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