Insurance · 2025 · 16 weeks
Getting a field adjuster's photos into an underwriting decision the same day
A regional property insurer's field inspections took nine days to reach underwriting. We rebuilt the capture-to-decision path so structured, georeferenced findings land the same afternoon.
- Sector
- Insurance
- Year
- 2025
- Engagement
- 16 weeks
- Team
- 4 people
The insurer's field adjusters were good at their jobs and buried in their own paperwork. An inspection produced sixty photos, a voice memo, and a form filled out in a truck; nine days later, a typed summary reached underwriting, usually after the renewal decision had already been made on stale information. Nobody in the chain was slow. The chain itself was the problem.
The situation
Roughly 8,000 inspections a year across three states, each one a bundle of photos, notes, and coordinates that had to be manually assembled into a report. Underwriters told us they had stopped reading the full reports years ago: the reports were too long and arrived too late to matter.
What we did
We rebuilt the capture side first: a structured mobile flow that georeferences every photo and prompt-guides the adjuster through what underwriting actually needs. A model drafts the findings summary from the structured capture within minutes of sync; the adjuster approves or corrects it from the truck. Underwriting sees a two-page brief, with every claim in it linked to the photo and location that supports it.
The reports got shorter and I trust them more. Those two things usually move in opposite directions.
What we found
The model-drafted summaries were accurate on structure and weak on judgment: they described the corroded flashing correctly but couldn't rank it against the region's claims history. We stopped asking the model for judgment. It drafts what was observed; the adjuster owns what it means.
What we learned
What didn't work: our first mobile flow was too rigid. Adjusters abandoned it in the field within two weeks because real inspections don't happen in the order a form designer imagines. We rebuilt it around photo-first capture with the structure applied afterward, and adoption recovered. We should have ridden along on more inspections before designing anything: the two ride-alongs we did in week one were not enough.