Sixfold Content

In commercial underwriting, submissions rarely contain everything underwriters need to properly assess risks. Critical information such as SEC filings, cyber incidents, litigation history, or executive misconduct aren't in the application, and finding that data falls on the underwriter.

The stakes are high: miss one key detail, and underwriters are suddenly pricing a completely different risk. The research to uncover this information means hours going through public sources such as news archives and databases.

All while brokers demand quotes fast in an increasingly competitive market.

Why We Built it

With Research Agent, underwriters have a research partner who finds the gaps in the submission, locates the missing pieces, and brings back the insights that matter for the decision. The agent does the external research work on the underwriter’s behalf.

By filling critical information gaps and applying research from the public web and connected third-party data sources into Sixfold’s overall risk assessment, underwriters are given a complete risk picture for more precise appraisal. Underwriters can view the exact origin of any piece of information, with clickable links that take them directly to the original source for verification or further detail.
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The result? Quotes go out faster, underwriters make more consistent calls, and decisions get made without wondering what might have been missed.

“Research Agent has been one of our most anticipated features, especially for customers in specialty lines where extensive research is needed to get a complete picture of the risk. We expect the agent to save them at least two hours per case.”

- Alex Schmelkin, Founder & CEO at Sixfold

When Research Makes Or Breaks The Quote

Sixfold’s Research Agent is designed to support commercial lines of business where external data is essential in risk evaluation and quoting. Lines of business we’re seeing the highest demand for include:‍

• General Liability - Public web research to capture OSHA violations, litigation history, and negative press coverage.
• Cyber - 3rd party cyber threat intelligence plus broader public web research for cyber breach disclosures and corporate litigation involving cybersecurity lapses.
• E&S Property - Public and/or 3rd party data on location and climate based risks (flood, wildfire, crime, etc.), permit history, and company mentions in the news.
• Directors & Officers (D&O) - News on executive misconduct, class-action lawsuits, SEC filings, and shareholder news.
• Healthcare & Life Sciences - Public records of malpractice lawsuits, regulatory actions, patient safety concerns, and news coverage related to clinical trials or product safety.

While Competitors Prep, You Price

Research Agent delivers wins across the board, immediate time savings for underwriters and competitive advantages insurers. 

“We’re seeing growing demand for research-heavy underwriting. With this launch, we accelerate the time to quote while elevating decision-making with richer context.”
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- Lana Jovanovic, Head of Product at Sixfold

Focus on what matters: Those hours gained back per case? That's time underwriters can spend on what they do best: making smart risk decisions, strengthening broker relationships, and building customer connections instead of drowning in research tasks.

Speed wins deals: Reduced manual research burden means underwriters can respond faster to brokers, increase their quote volume, and capture more bound premiums. For carriers competing on both responsiveness and quality, this means winning more of the right business.

Same quality, every time: Every underwriter now has access to the same thorough research process. No more inconsistency based on who's handling the case or how much time they have to dig. Better decisions, whether it's one case or a thousand.

Improved portfolio performance: Sixfold’s comprehensive risk assessment, now with the added capability of public web research and connected third-party data, equips underwriters with a deeper understanding of each risk.

Contact Sixfold to see the Research Agent in action.

No one became an underwriter because they love writing case documentation. But that’s where a huge amount of time goes today. Referral notes, peer review memos, audit documentation, written and rewritten, case after case. 

• A single case can take an hour, often several hours, to document.
• Multiply that across a typical team handling hundreds of submissions each week. The result is thousands of hours spent each year on documentation alone.
• Underwriters are doing this work while balancing dozens of other tasks: reviewing new submissions, responding to brokers, preparing quotes, and managing existing accounts.

80% Automation, 20% Judgment

Sixfold’s Narrative feature automates and standardizes how risk is communicated across the organization. It automatically generates a risk narrative that matches each insurer’s appetite, tone and format, while giving underwriters the flexibility to apply their own judgment where it matters.

See below for a quick product walkthrough from Shirley Shen, Senior Product Manager @Sixfold:

The Narrative feature is built to:

1. Align with the insurer’s unique risk appetite
2. Surface key facts and risk insights that matter most
3. Adhere to required documentation standards and formats

“Think of all the documents underwriters have to create for administrative purposes. Anything that requires them to synthesize the risk overall. Sixfold is doing 80% of that now: bringing together all the facts. Then the underwriter just adds the last 20%, the judgment call.” 
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- Laurence Brouillette, Head of Customers and Partnerships @Sixfold

Proven with Zurich’s North America Team

The Narrative feature was developed and validated through the 2024 Zurich Innovation Championship (ZIC).

Over a 6-week sprint with Zurich’s North America Middle Market team, Sixfold:

• Partnered with 16 underwriters and was used in 80%+ of their live submissions
• Processed nearly 4,000 pages of submission and web data
• Achieved an average of 60 minutes time savings per submission

Following this success, Narrative is now rolling out across Zurich’s U.S. offices.

"We launched with four Zurich Middle Market offices in January 2025 and are now expanding Sixfold to dozens more offices countrywide.”

- Amy Nelsen, Head of Underwriting Operations, U.S. Middle Market @Zurich North America

How Zurich gives underwriters time back with Sixfold — featured in The Insurer.

AI That Actually Gets Used

Narrative is a great starting point for insurers looking to bring AI into underwriting workflows today. It takes the repetitive parts of the job off underwriters’ hands without requiring them to change how they already work. 

“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.”

- Madison Chapman, Senior Middle Market Underwriter @Zurich North America

How Sixfold is transforming underwriting for Zurich’s U.S. Middle Market team.

When underwriters experience that impact immediately, with fewer hours spent writing up cases and fewer rounds of revisions, adoption happens easily. AI becomes part of the flow of work because it genuinely makes the day-to-day tasks so much easier.

Get in touch to see how Sixfold fits your underwriting workflow.

Excess & Surplus insurance demand has surged over the past few years, and for underwriters, that means more cases to sort through every day. We’ve heard from professionals across the segment about how high the case volume has gotten and how challenging it is to keep up.

So what’s driving this? We’re talking about one of the fastest-growing lines in insurance, with a 21% compound annual growth rate over the past five years, according to Insurance Journal. The growth comes from the segment’s ability to handle uncertainty like economic shifts or environmental changes, which have gotten more complex in recent years.

We’re talking about one of the fastest-growing lines in insurance, with a 21% compound annual growth rate over the past five years

One example is a cannabis business trying to get insurance. That kind of risk wouldn’t even be considered a few years ago. Since E&S takes on the risks standard carriers won’t, it’s absorbing more business, especially as admitted carriers get more cautious with the economic changes. At the same time, wholesale brokers—experts in hard-to-place risks—are sending more business than ever to E&S carriers. 

The market's growth has also led to increased participation from both newly-capitalized and re-capitalized insurers, as well as managing general agents entering the distribution side. This influx has intensified competition, resulting in a decline in market share for 14 of the top 25 E&S players in 2021, according to Risk & Insurance.

The Hidden Bottlenecks in Quoting

As the market surges, underwriters are buried in rising case volumes and more complex risks. With more players, competition, and pressure from wholesale brokers, getting quotes back quickly isn’t just nice to have–it’s critical for winning and retaining business. But what is currently causing delays in the quoting process?

As the market surges, underwriters are buried in rising case volumes and more complex risks

1. Many submissions, no easy way to filter them

E&S carriers receive all the non-admitted risks that standard insurers decline, often from a wide range of wholesale brokers. That volume adds up fast. The immediate impact? Underwriters have a hard time identifying the winnable opportunities and spend time working on cases that are out of their appetite.

2. Quoting process is mostly manual

A big part of the quoting process is manual. There’s a lot of data entry, systems that don’t help with prioritization, and information in all kinds of formats.

Because of that, E&S underwriters are still spending a lot of valuable time on manual tasks. In some cases, quoting can take up to 30 days. Think about incorrect routing between departments, incomplete information from brokers, and offshore teams handling SIC/NAICS code classification.

All of that slows everything down. And brokers? They’re expecting fast answers.

And brokers? They’re expecting fast answers.

3. Complex risks with tight deadlines

E&S risks are complex, and they take time to quote. But with the amount of submissions coming in, there’s just not enough time in the day to go through them all manually.

Underwriters need fast access to the key information that actually matters. That’s the only way to speed up quoting or quickly say no to risks that don’t fit.

The Result

All of this leads to premiums not being looked at, slower response times to brokers, and losing good deals to the competition. In a segment where demand is high and it’s nearly impossible to assess every risk, it’s key to spot high-quality submissions earlier in the process so carriers and underwriters aren’t stuck spending time on risks that won’t bind. 

And when that happens, it’s not just GWP left on the table—it’s lost time and momentum.

Just think about the amount of premium carriers could capture by identifying the right opportunities from the start. Especially in a market that reached $130 billion in direct premiums in 2024 according to Insurance Insider US.

Imagine recieveing 50 submissions and already knowing which ones to prioritize, which ones fit your guidelines, what’s worth pricing creatively, and what’s a fast no

So, how can underwriters identify the right risks? 

It all starts with quickly understanding whether a submission matches your appetite through an efficient triaging process. Imagine receiving 50 submissions and already knowing which ones to prioritize, which ones fit your guidelines, what’s worth pricing creatively, and what’s a fast no. 

It’s not about writing any piece of business, it’s about writing the right ones for your business. With proper triaging, underwriters can move faster, get back to brokers quicker, and focus on what matters.

So, how do you actually get to the right risks faster? That’s where Sixfold comes in.

AI that Instantly Identifies Your Top Risks

Sixfold’s triage solution speeds up decision-making with instant, appetite-aligned scoring. Here’s how it works:

1. Showcasing the cases you want to quote

Sixfold ingests each insurer’s underwriting guidelines to learn the company’s unique risk appetite. Then, based on SOVs, applications, loss runs, and additional data, Sixfold’s AI runs the risk assessment, using both the documents uploaded and relevant company info it pulls from the web. It looks at the data points that matter for the insurer, such as for example construction year, occupancy, loss history, and more. From there, it generates a risk score for the submission from 0 to 5.

• 0 means it doesn’t fit your risk appetite at all 
• 5 means it’s a highly qualified risk for you

Solving the front door issue by filtering risks immediately means underwriters can respond faster, whether it’s a quote or a decline

The impact? Underwriters know right away which incoming applications are worth their time. Wholesale brokers are strategic partners for E&S carriers. But when underwriters get too busy, they are sometimes left waiting for a reply. Solving the front door issue by filtering risks immediately means underwriters can respond faster, whether it’s a quote or a decline.

2. Classifying businesses with > 90% Accuracy

In E&S, sometimes a small difference in business activity can immediately make a risk fall out of the risk appetite. That’s why accurate NAICS and SIC code classification is key.

Sixfold automatically matches each submission to the correct business classification code, even for highly nuanced and complex industries, so no more time is wasted trying to figure out what type of business the company is. This supports better routing and faster underwriting decisions.

3. Presenting contextual risk factors 

Sixfold surfaces the risk signals that matter most, whether they disqualify a submission, negatively impact it, or strengthen it. Everything is aligned with the insurer’s appetite and focused on the factors that drive the overall decision. Underwriters get precisely what they need to make confident calls.

Underwriters get precisely what they need to make confident calls.

See It in Action 

The volume of submissions in E&S isn’t slowing down. But with the right triage process, underwriters can focus on decision-making, quote the right risks faster, and bring in more premiums. 

The carriers winning today aren’t working harder; they’re triaging smarter.

Join our E&S product demo on May 21 with Alex Bontz, Customer Success Operations & Growth Lead. He’ll walk through how Sixfold quickly triages complex submissions and delivers the key risk insights underwriters need to take action.

Looking to catch up in person? Come find us at the E&S Reuters Conference on May 28. We will be there to connect with insurers looking for ways to improve their underwriting process with purpose-built AI.

Today, we’re excited to introduce the first-ever AI Accuracy Validator built for insurance underwriting. 

This application provides our commerical insurance customers with a transparent and comprehensive way to evaluate Sixfold’s accuracy—reinforcing our commitment to bring reliable and trustworthy risk assessments to underwriters.

Why did we build this?

For an AI solution to truly add value in underwriting, it needs to be both efficient and accurate. Many claim to be both—but is there proof?

For an AI solution to truly add value in underwriting, it needs to be both efficient and accurate. Many claim to be both—but is there proof?

Measuring efficiency can be fairly straightforward—reducing manual work, processing submissions faster, and automating repetitive tasks all provide clear benchmarks. But accuracy? That’s a completely different challenge.

How does it work?

The Accuracy Validator compares Sixfold’s AI-generated insights to the ideal version—what an experienced underwriter at the carrier would expect. It checks for accuracy, scores the results, and provides feedback to improve alignment with human analysis.

Here is a video overview from Lana, Head of Product at Sixfold, on how the validator works:

AI that speaks Underwriter

‍‍For AI solutions built for underwriters, accuracy isn’t about finding a single “correct” answer—it’s about reasoning like an underwriter. Take a risk summary as an example, an AI-constructed risk summary shouldn’t just condense information; it should highlight the key risk factors that matter to each carrier.

But what happens if an AI summary leaves out a key risk detail? How do you measure how off it is? What do you compare it to? And when a model is updated, how do you know it’s actually improving accuracy—not just changing the output?

So we started searching for an evaluation tool that could help us answer these questions — but nothing existed.

These were the questions we asked ourselves. So we started searching for an evaluation tool that could help us answer these questions — but nothing existed. It wasn’t just that we couldn’t find the right tool—we realized the industry wasn’t even thinking about accuracy in an insurance-underwriting-specific way.

So, we built it. With this capability in place, we can continuously improve Sixfold’s output, ensuring underwriters receive factually correct, reliable, and actionable insights for every risk assessment.

Benefit #1 - Track progress over time

Evaluating AI accuracy isn’t just a one-time task—it’s about ensuring consistency and continuous improvement. With clear benchmark metrics, insurers can easily track progress and see how Sixfold’s AI aligns with their underwriting standards over time.

Accuracy benchmarks help insurers assess Sixfold’s performance during the pilot phase, ensuring it delivers value to the underwriting team before moving to full implementation.

Considering a Sixfold pilot? Accuracy benchmarks help insurers assess Sixfold’s performance during the pilot phase, ensuring it delivers value to the underwriting team before moving to full implementation. Want to keep tabs on accuracy? No problem. We offer on-demand reports to give our customers a real-time look at how well our AI is performing, whenever they need it.

Benefit #2 - Confident AI adoption

From day one, our goal has been to build an underwriting AI solution that users trust. If underwriters can’t trust Sixfold’s insights, why would they rely on them for critical decisions?

Even in low-stakes tasks, AI’s accuracy isn’t always guaranteed. Take general-purpose LLMs—they handle simple research tasks and tasks such as summarizing reports, but even then, you might find yourself second-guessing their output. They’re right sometimes—but how often? And can you tell when they’re not?

The result? More confident decisions, stronger justifications, and a clearer business case for when to quote—and when not to.

That kind of guesswork isn’t good enough for underwriting. The high-stakes decisions underwriters make every day demand high-stakes trust.

With transparent accuracy reporting, underwriters know exactly how reliable Sixfold’s insights are. The result? More confident decisions, stronger justifications, and a clearer business case for when to quote—and when not to.

Benefit #3 - Audit-ready records

To support insurers’ audit and compliance needs, we conduct regular assessments using this application — both after code updates and at scheduled intervals—to prevent model drift and ensure reliability. This process helps identify inconsistencies and flag any deviations from expected results before they impact underwriting decisions.

The Accuracy Validator generates a transparent, audit-ready log for each assessment, allowing insurers to:

✅ Verify the reasoning behind AI-generated insights and decisions.

✅ Monitor model performance over time to proactively address potential drift.

✅ Demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements by providing clear, documented AI processes

Feedback from customers

As we’ve started to introduce this capability to insurers, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Some have even asked if they can use it to evaluate some of their other AI applications — a very clear proof of its value from day one. Others have asked to use the Accuracy Validator outside of AI applications to monitor overall underwriting accuracy.

Another key feedback we’ve received is that no other AI solution offers this level of structured performance measurement and tracking.

Another key feedback we’ve received is that no other AI solution offers this level of structured performance measurement and tracking. Sixfold is the first to give insurers a clear way to validate AI impact and track results over time in underwriting.

Curious to learn how you can get started with Sixfold? Check out the FAQ section to learn more about our pilot program, designed to help insurers fully assess the value of Sixfold before scaling up.

Reach out with any additional questions!

Sixfold’s in-line citation feature is all about building trust and confidence with underwriters by making it effortless to trace the source of Sixfold’s insights. And now, with our latest update we’re making this feature even better on our commercial platform! 

So, what is new?

When reviewing an applicant’s case, you'll notice these improvements:

• Exact Source Page: No more searching through the entire document—now you’ll see the exact page where a fact was found.
• In-line Fact Attribution: Each fact provided by Sixfold will include a specific source citation.
• One-Click Verification: Click any citation, and it will instantly open the source page for you.
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It’s now even easier and more intuitive to check exactly where Sixfold’s insights came from—whether a questionnaire, loss run statement, webpage, or any other source. This improves traceability and gives underwriters extra peace of mind. No need to read through a full report or scroll through multiple pages to validate Sixfold’s insights.

“This feature exemplifies our commitment to building trustworthy and explainable AI with elegant simplicity.”

- Drew Das, AI Software Engineer

Get in touch to get a full demo of Sixfold's platform.

In case you’re new here, we’ll start by reintroducing ourselves. Sixfold is the first purpose-built AI for insurance underwriting, designed to help insurance underwriters reduce their manual workload. We work with global and innovative insurance carriers like AXIS, Zurich Insurance Group, and Generali.

This year has been full of milestones—we’ve processed over 150,000 submissions, responded to more than 250,000 custom underwriting queries, and gathered 3,200+ hours of underwriter feedback.

So, how did we get here? We sat down with our engineering and product teams to give you an inside look at what we built, how we did it, and the technology behind it all.

The result? Nine of our top product achievements this year, picked by the folks who built them from the ground up, all focused on improving accuracy, efficiency, and transparency for underwriters around the world.

1. Improved Accuracy through Advanced Data Extraction & Risk Matching

What is it? ​​💡 

Accuracy is one of the key elements at Sixfold and this time we’ve improved our models to deliver:

• Better data extraction from complex insurance documents
• Faster and more accurate matching of insurer risk appetites to key signals within cases

How did we build this? ⚙️

Our AI team focused on these key areas:

1. Addressing variability in LLM responses
2. Developing accuracy metrics and ensuring targeted output
3. Quantitative testing for basic accuracy

“Working with LLMs is unique because they don’t always give the same answer to the same question. To handle that variability, we created metrics to assess how well we extract the necessary information, the precision of our responses, and our performance on key tasks."

- Ian Cook, Head of AI

What’s the impact? 🚀

Boosting accuracy for underwriters is one of our core missions. With our latest models, we’ve seen a 40% improvement in data extraction accuracy compared to six months ago — even from the most difficult-to-read documents.

“General methods to pull text from a PDF don’t go far enough to meet the rigor we demand. By focusing on the specific documents and information underwriters need, we deliver a more targeted, efficient system than off-the-shelf data extraction services.”

- Ian Cook, Head of AI

2. ​​Transparency in One Click Through
In-line Citations 

What is it? ​​💡 

With this feature, underwriters can find the source of any information Sixfold is showcasing –with just one click. It’ll show which documents and websites the facts came from. Need to know the exact page? No problem we got you!

In-line citations don’t just build trust in our platform; they also give underwriters context on certain risks and provide full traceability for every piece of risk analysis.

“One of the most important things for an underwriter is not only seeing the pertinent risk signals or questionnaire responses we surface as part of the Sixfold risk analysis but also being able to dig deeper or understand the broader concept behind that information.”

- Lana Jovanovic , Head of Product

How did we build this? ⚙️

In simple terms, we associate each extracted fact with a page number to surface the most relevant information. So, what was the underwriting need behind this development?

1. Building trust and confidence in the results
2. To quickly locate information without having to read through many documents

“Certain information surfaced as part of that analysis may even trigger additional add-on questions or thoughts that they may have about it, so they can really rapidly be able to dig in further”

- Lana Jovanovic, Head of Product

What’s the impact? 🚀

We’re bringing transparency, speed, and confidence for underwriters—making it that much easier to make informed decisions.

3. Quicker Decisions With Reduced Case Processing Time

What is it? ​​💡

With our commitment to making underwriters' lives easier, this improvement was an absolute must! Our engineers rolled up their sleeves and worked hard to bring our case processing time down by 61%!

So, what happens during that processing time? Sixfold analyzes aggregated information, searches the web for publicly available information company data, and decides the right NAICS/SIC code classification.   

How did we build this? ⚙️

“It started by reviewing our analysis pipeline step-by-step. We measured the processing time and the size of the data payload for each step of our pipeline to see where we could identify any bottlenecks.”

- Ian Hirschfeld, Senior Engineering Manager

Here are the steps we took:

1. Broke large data processing tasks into smaller and faster units that could run concurrently
2. Reconfigured the pipeline to allow multiple analysis steps to run in parallel

What’s the impact? 🚀

A 61% reduction in processing time—and hopefully, a lot more happy underwriters!

4. Closer Alignment With Your Risk Appetite Through Weighted Risk Signals 

What is it? ​​💡

This feature will show underwriters all the risk criteria they’ve defined as important and classify those risks as either positive, really positive, negative, or really negative. And yes, the weighted risk signals are tailored to each customer’s unique risk guidelines and definitions.

For example, a cyber company might consider it a “really positive” signal if a prospect has implemented a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) process, while not having a backup in place might be something really negative.

How did we build this? ⚙️

Our product team envisioned this feature as something that could easily adapt to each carrier’s unique needs and got close support from our Lloyd's mentors during our 10-week Lloyd’s Lab Program, to refine and improve this feature. 

Some of the core elements to figure out when building this feature included:

1. Creating a scoring model that’s detailed enough to handle different signals without becoming too complex
2. Balancing positive, negative, and neutral signals to accurately reflect real-world underwriting decisions
3. Making sure the system could adapt smoothly to each carrier’s existing workflows

Because every carrier and industry interprets risk signals differently, we needed a solution that was both flexible and adaptable.

“The biggest challenge in designing this feature was addressing the diverse UW guidelines across various sectors.”

- Leonardo Momente, Senior Software Engineer 

What’s the impact? 🚀

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This feature is a great improvement in accuracy in appetite match scoring. This not only saves time but also improves underwriting precision.

“Frequent iteration and testing allowed us to refine the scoring criteria and user interface based on user feedback, ensuring the system was both effective and intuitive.”

- Leonardo Momente, Senior Software Engineer 

5. Reliable Evaluations Thanks to Detailed Medical & Lifestyle Insights

What is it? 💡

Life and disability underwriters have to go through hundreds of pages of medical documents, alongside lifestyle details, hobbies, and family medical histories. Sounds like a lot, right? Some might even compare it to detective work.

With our Life and Disability customers in mind, our product and engineering team built the Lifestyle & Medical History Analysis from scratch. This feature analyzes all the documents provided for a case and brings back a summary of all relevant risk information, helping underwriters quote cases more efficiently and quickly.

Sixfold takes care of the heavy lifting so that underwriters can focus on decision-making and relationship-building!

How did we build this? ⚙️

This feature was designed in different phases:

1. Sixfold ingests all the documents underwriters upload for a particular case, extracting the relevant text from each file
2. We analyze both the structured and unstructured data extracted, summarizing key information for the underwriter
3. To make it even easier, we provide a chronological narrative of each case or condition

But, that’s not all! We also flag specific conditions predefined by the carrier and deduplicate repetitive information.

“One challenge was the fact that these medical histories can have a lot of repetitive information. For example, the history of a diagnosis or condition can appear many times across different types of documents.”

- Omeed Fallahi, Software Engineer

What’s the impact? 🚀

This feature dramatically reduces the manual work for underwriters, cutting down processing time for each case.

“You might have a negative risk signal for diabetes, for example. What the AI can do is identify a medication for diabetes that doesn’t explicitly mention the word ‘diabetes’ and flag it as a risk signal. This means the underwriter doesn’t have to constantly check what each medication is and what it treats.”

– Drew Das, Senior AI Engineer

6. Robust Security Through SOC2 Type II Certification + HIPAA Compliance

What is it? 💡

Our main goal is to make underwriters' lives easier – that’s at the core of everything we do – making sure our platform plays a huge part in that.

So, what does it mean for Sixfold to be SOC 2 compliant? This means that a neutral, expert third party has evaluated our platform to confirm we meet strict security controls, data protection, and availability standards. With SOC 2, we’ve gone the extra mile to prove these controls work consistently and effectively over time.

And what about HIPAA? HIPAA protects patient health information (PHI), and being HIPAA compliant means we’ve passed an audit confirming that our platform meets the privacy and security requirements needed to serve the life insurance industry.

How did we build this? ⚙️

Over several months, our engineering team addressed a series of steps to align with these regulations:

1. Implementing strong access controls, user authentication, and data encryption
2. Creating detailed incident response and disaster recovery plans
3. Setting up continuous security monitoring, logging, and comprehensive documentation

"Team coordination and implementation proved to be a challenge. We needed to ensure all staff members were properly trained and fully understood our security protocols and compliance requirements. "

-  Ryan Garver, Staff Software Engineer

What’s the impact? 🚀

By meeting these standards, we’ve put ourselves in a stronger position to help our customers meet their compliance needs in the insurance industry. It’s all about making Sixfold a trusted, reliable partner for carriers.

“For our platform, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance are fundamental business necessities, not just regulatory requirements”

- Ryan Garver, Staff Software Engineer

7. Establishing a Responsible AI Framework

What is it? 💡

We love helping underwriters improve their quoting process with AI—that’s our main goal—but we also want to do it in a responsible way and set the benchmark for Responsible AI. With that in mind, we created our Responsible AI Report.

The report gives an overview of Sixfold’s approach to safe AI usage and answers common questions about the topic.

With Sixfold, you can have peace of mind knowing that your data is:

1. Never stored or used for training our base model 
2. Isolated and separated from others
3. Locked up tight for ultimate security

How did we build this? ⚙️

Our AI team is constantly working on:

1. Evaluating and re-evaluating our workflows and pipelines
2. Reviewing data that enters our system and assessing it for appropriateness and consistency to ensure it aligns with our Responsible AI principles
3. Refining code, LLM-based interactions, and data governance to ensure no protected class information is inserted or surfaced

“While we always want to make sure we’re aligned with the latest research on Responsible AI, the principles themselves don’t change as often as the tools. Our focus is on applying those principles every time we evaluate new tools and techniques.”

— Ian Cook, Head of AI

What’s the impact? 🚀

The Responsible AI Report reinforces our security standards and compliance commitments, building trust with our customers.

“As someone once said, focus is choosing what not to do. The framework helps us keep focus by making it clear what we should not be doing.”
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— Ian Cook, Head of AI

8. Boosting Speed and Accuracy with Fewer Tabs via API

What is it? 💡

You may not even notice, but you’re probably using APIs – Application Programming Interfaces –every day. An API allows different software to communicate while keeping the user on the same interface they’re familiar with. Think about online shopping—you don’t need to leave the site to process your payment through the credit card company, right? That’s an API working behind the scenes! 

For Sixfold, launching our API was a big step because it brings simplicity and efficiency to underwriters using our system. Underwriting teams often work across multiple platforms during the quoting process, so we made it easy for our customers’ tech teams to integrate Sixfold’s AI capabilities directly into the tools they’re already using.

How did we build this? ⚙️

Our engineering team focused on:

1. Identifying the most critical information to expose through the API and how this information might differ from what is presented in the Sixfold Web UI
2. Highlighting the most relevant data, supported by auditable sources
3. Minimizing exposure to behind-the-scenes complexity

What’s the impact? 🚀

Sixfold’s API makes it easier for our customers to process a high volume of cases daily.

“One of our customers submits approximately 1,000 cases per day, with an average processing time of 31 seconds per case.”

- Ian Hirschfeld, Senior Engineering Manager

9. Streamlining Workflow Efficiency with SSO Integration

What is it? ​​💡 

Yes, SSO stands for Single Sign-On. But what does that actually mean? We like to think of it as a way to simplify the way users log into applications.

For our customers, that basically means using their corporate email address to securely access Sixfold’s platform. And trust us, implementing SSO isn’t easy—there are plenty of security considerations, and the first thing that comes to mind is compliance!

How did we build this? ⚙️

This feature was a top request from our customers and with a diverse client base, our platform team had a lot of boxes to check:

1. Different configurations across different clients
2. Which Identity Provider do they use? Microsoft Azure or PingFederate, for example?
3. How does user authentication happen—and how do we map users correctly?

“If you have a team of different underwriters, maybe they have different permissions—maybe they can see one case that fits certain criteria but not another.

And when new underwriters join, you want them seamlessly authenticated and authorized the same way as your existing underwriters.”

- Mike Rooney, Principal Software Engineer

What’s the impact? 🚀

No more handling a bunch of passwords! SSO is simply a better way to log in, reducing the chance of leaked credentials.

“Very soon, we’ll just be able to send a link to new customers who want to set up SSO with us. They can go through a detailed onboarding guide at their own pace. Once they’re done and happy with the setup, it turns green on our dashboard and we’re good to go.” 
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– Mike Rooney, Principal Software Engineer

That’s a 2024 Wrap

Looking back at these product developments and improvements, a few key themes stand out— efficiency, accuracy, and transparency. These are the key elements Sixfold is committed to bringing to underwriters every step of the risk assessment process. 

Want to see how we’re making a difference in underwriting today? Check out how AXIS reduced submission time from 30 minutes to just 60 seconds, and how Zurich’s underwriters saved an average of 90 minutes per submission.

Thanks for sticking with us until the end of this post, and we’ll see you in the next one!