Shepherds Friendly has signed a deal with Alula Technologies to provide its low-code untomated underwriting platform.
A key goal of the bespoke integration is to empower Shepherds Friendly to reach a wider audience, the mutual said, with underwriting enhancements aimed at allowing the friendly society to provide cover to more people.
In the future, the mutual plans to integrate more of the pre-configured capabilities that exist within the platform, including AI decisioning and document fraud analysis.
It added it hopes to leverage the platform’s ability to ingest external data sources in the underwriting processes, which could enable increased real-time decisions and insights to improve the customer experience.
Daniel Simpson, chief innovation officer at Shepherds Friendly, said: “As a mutual, a core part of our ethos is to strengthen financial resilience, and we believe adapting underwriting models in line with societal change and shifting market conditions is vital to increasing the uptake of products such as income protection.
“Our own research shows that only 14% of Brits currently have income protection; this is something we’re committed to improving.
“This new platform significantly enhances our ability to adapt our processes at speed.
“By automating our underwriting, we can deliver faster, more consistent decisions and improve the overall digital experience for our members. In the future, it will also allow us to ingest external data sources into our underwriting processes, helping us to future-proof our operations and continue innovating.”
Patrick Ashton, solutions director at Alula Technologies, said: “The first phase of our work with Shepherds Friendly was aimed at meeting its current needs, but also at enabling it to adapt to the changing consumer landscape in future.
“We look forward to continuing to work together as the business grows further and hope our platform plays a role in ensuring the society’s long-term success.”