Article: Coexisting by necessity: underwriters are here to stay, and so is automated underwriting which has made the lives of some more difficult, but the lives of many others a lot easier. Thus it has been for decades; and thus it is likely to remain.(SPECIAL REPORT: UNDERWRITING)

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With every new technological promise to further automate underwriting come the warnings: underwriters are dead, long live underwriters. And yet once every putatively new technology, having swept through the industry, vanished once more, underwriters reappeared stronger than ever.

Who's kidding whom? Automated underwriting, which has been a staple of risk management ever since the insurance industry adopted the mainframe more than 50 years ago, will surely remain for the next 50 and beyond.

For their part, flesh-and-blood underwriters are here to stay too, and perhaps the only thought worthy of burial appears to be that of ...

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