Background

Zurich North America’s U.S. Middle Market (USMM) team has a reputation for combining disciplined underwriting with innovation. They saw an opportunity to tackle one of the most pressing pain points in their business: the manual burden of evaluating complex commercial submissions.

Each submission often meant combing through hundreds of pages — exposures, operations, loss runs, and supplemental forms — followed by the time-intensive task of writing a clear and compliant underwriting narrative. This work was critical, but time-consuming and repetitive. After Sixfold was selected as one of nine winners of the Zurich Innovation Championship, the USMM team moved quickly from concept to implementation. The goal wasn’t just to experiment, it was to implement AI that could help underwriters gain back valuable hours to focus on higher-order analysis, customer relationships, and decision-making.

“Our underwriters were reading novels, multiple novels, every week. We want them out in the market, not behind their desks eight hours a day.”
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— Amy Nelsen, Head of Underwriting Operations @ Zurich North America Middle Market

Challenges

The pressure on mid market underwriters was growing. Submission volumes were high, timelines were short, and the complexity of documentation made every case feel like a research project.

The bottleneck wasn’t just the time spent reviewing information. It was the compounding impact on broker responsiveness, consistency, and the ability to scale across new markets. Zurich North America needed a solution that could relieve this burden, without compromising quality or control.

Solution

Zurich North America collaborated with Sixfold to roll out an AI underwriting tool that could transform how underwriters approached risk assessments. Instead of starting from a blank page, underwriters now receive an AI-generated first draft of the underwriting narrative, tailored to Zurich North America’s unique risk appetite and preferred format and tone.

To ensure trust from day one, Sixfold focused on:

• Consistent and transparent accuracy tracking and reporting through Sixfold’s AI Accuracy Validator
• Collaborative feedback sessions with Zurich North America’s MM underwriting team
• Seamless integration into existing workflows, no context-switching required

The result was an AI tool that felt intuitive and helpful, not disruptive. It didn’t replace underwriter judgment, it gave them a head start.

“Sixfold streamlines the way underwriters receive information on new submissions, offering a holistic and simplified overview of a business’s operations and exposures right from the point of entry into our workflow. It compresses information into an easy-to-read format and allows us to make necessary adjustments to the data input.”
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- Madison Chapman, Senior Middle Market Underwriter @Zurich North America Middle Market

Results

Underwriters reported saving an average of 60 minutes per submission — time they could now reinvest in broker conversations, judgment calls, and strategy. Within six months, Zurich North America expanded the deployment from four initial offices to dozens across the country. Importantly, underwriters embraced the tool not just as a time-saver, but as a quality supporter. It helped them flag inconsistencies, improve the clarity of narratives, and focus their attention where it mattered most.

What began as a focused productivity play has now evolved into a strategic capability, enabling the Zurich North America team to scale its midmarket presence with speed, consistency, and confidence.

Following its success, Zurich Insurance is now evaluating where else in the underwriting workflow Sixfold’s AI can deliver meaningful impact.

“I ran a tough submission through Sixfold, one we were leaning toward quoting. It surfaced a major exposure buried deep in the company’s website that we hadn’t seen. That detail changed our risk assessment and led us to rethink the opportunity. Sixfold is not just a timesaver, it’s a second set of eyes that spots what’s easy to miss.”
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— Alex Szerzinski, Senior Market Facing Underwriter @Zurich North America Middle