Kirk Schneider (pictured), personal lines underwriter/broker at Specialty Program Group (SPG Wholesale), says artificial intelligence has changed excess and surplus (E&S) lines underwriting less by automating decisions than by speeding up how fast he can check whether a risk fits a carrier's guidelines.
Submission volume has climbed sharply in recent years, Schneider said, driven in part by wildfire activity across California and the West Coast that has pushed more business into the E&S market. Against that backdrop, tools like Claude have become a way to cut through hundreds of pages of carrier guidelines in seconds rather than hours, letting him move faster from submission to a fit-or-no-fit answer.
"As an underwriter, that helps me instead of trying to go through 80 pages of guidelines," Schneider said. "I can go instantly and find out whether something is a fit or it's not a fit."
He said the actual rate-setting still sits well above his role. He works within guidelines set by carriers and leans on tools such as Risk Meter and MapRisk to gauge where the market stands, but the underlying actuarial pricing comes from the carriers themselves.
E&S underwriters have traditionally operated in what Schneider called the gray area, using judgment on risks that don't fit standard guidelines. He said that flexibility is narrowing as carriers use their own AI tools to audit the accounts underwriters write, a shift that has tightened guidelines and increased scrutiny across the market, echoing broader unease captured in a recent report on underwriters who remain wary of trusting AI-driven decisions.
Schneider pushed back on the idea that automation will eventually reduce underwriters to rubber stampers. He argued the opposite is more likely in the near term: AI will sharpen the reports, presentations and quotes underwriters produce, while someone still has to be accountable when a risk goes bad, even one that was properly underwritten.
"There's always going to be a person who has to answer for decisions," he said. "Even if it wasn't a mistake, it was a good risk, but it still was burned in the fire. We have to talk about it."
He was equally direct about the limits of the technology. Client relationships, he said, depend on a human connection that AI cannot replicate, even as it improves the materials underwriters bring to those conversations. Looking ahead, he pointed to communication skills and marketing savvy, paired with fluency in AI tools, as what will set apart underwriters entering the industry over the next five years.
Schneider said the high net worth homeowners segment is expanding each year, though capacity in the space moves in cycles. Carriers pile in at aggressive rates, pull back when they've written more than they're comfortable holding, and sometimes re-enter years later, a pattern he pointed to with AIG's own exit and return to the market. That volatility sits alongside a broader affordability squeeze already shaping the segment, one detailed in reporting on high net worth homeowners increasingly stitching together coverage from multiple carriers, and a market where large specialty insurers continue to post strong growth and surplus gains in the high net worth space.
Because some high-value homes exceed what a single carrier will offer in full limits, Schneider said layering multiple carriers onto one risk has become routine, and technology has made that process considerably faster.
"We can put that into Claude, for example, and it will give us good presentations, high level quotes, and solid feedback to relay back to the client," he said.
