Who Owns Insurance Pricing Now? Actuaries, Underwriters and IT Share the Answer

Oct 23, 2026 AI in Insurance, Data Advisory, Pricing, Underwriting

As data and AI reshape insurance pricing, carriers need teams that connect analytical insight, underwriting judgment, and reliable technology execution to support better pricing decisions and business performance.

By Dorota Gawron, Insurance Pricing Consultant at Sollers Consulting

An insurer identifies an emerging claims trend and develops a pricing adjustment. The analysis is sound, but putting it into practice raises questions. Can the policy system supply the required data? Who will test the calculation? How will underwriters use the result? Who takes responsibility if the change behaves differently in production?

These questions increasingly determine whether insurance pricing investments and pricing models deliver tangible business value. As insurers connect modeling, rating, and underwriting more closely, actuarial and underwriting teams are gaining greater opportunities to influence strategy and performance. They also encounter responsibilities that require new skills, clearer ownership, and deeper cooperation with IT.

How insurance pricing model development is changing

Pricing has long combined statistical analysis with insurance judgment. That foundation remains, while the tools and data available to pricing teams are expanding. Insurers can draw on more internal and external data sources, automate elements of model development, and use machine learning to explore relationships that conventional approaches can overlook. Generalized linear models continue to play an important role, but new tools and AI can accelerate their development or supplement them. AI can also help insurers identify emerging risk patterns, support pricing decisions and accelerate their development or supplement them.

Faster analysis creates more choices for pricing teams. It also requires scrutiny. A relationship found in historical data may be unstable, difficult to explain or dependent on information unavailable when a quote is produced. Actuarial expertise remains essential in assessing these limitations, selecting assumptions and determining whether analytical improvements support the insurer’s objectives.

Actuarial responsibility extends beyond pricing models and into production

Dedicated pricing platforms can change the traditional division of work, in which pricing teams supplied rating tables or specifications to IT. Pricing professionals may become more directly involved in configuring calculations, validating changes and deploying approved models.

Through our experience in pricing implementations at Sollers, we see how significant this transition can be. Professionals whose experience centers on models and analysis may suddenly need to participate in release processes, investigate integration problems or understand how to restore an earlier version if a change fails. Knowing that a model produces reasonable estimates is one requirement. Confirming that its production implementation uses the correct inputs, calculations, and version is quite another.

Underwriters help make models useful

Underwriters’ involvement becomes particularly valuable and strategic as insurers introduce more data and more sophisticated models into everyday workflows. It should begin with defining the problem. Which risks does the insurer want to understand better? What information can an underwriter realistically obtain?

Underwriters can help explain changes in coverage, business mix, or risk management practices that historical claims records do not fully capture. They can also challenge model results through representative accounts. Recording the reasons for adjustments creates a valuable feedback loop. Actuaries can investigate whether recurring deviations reveal missing information, a model limitation or a deliberate business choice.

Why data quality and system integration matter in insurance pricing

Good pricing starts with usable data. A pricing engine may need information from policy systems, internal databases and several external providers. Each connection introduces questions about definitions, formats, timing and availability. For example, a model may use information defined at coverage level while a connected application supplies it at policy level.

These are insurance questions as well as technical ones. This is one reason pricing transformation benefits from teams combining insurance knowledge, mathematical understanding and implementation experience. Coding capability alone cannot determine whether a calculation preserves the intended treatment of risk.

Why testing is critical to insurance pricing transformation

As pricing changes become easier to configure, testing deserves more attention. In one implementation, Sollers automated the data preparation, submitted test cases directly to the pricing engine and compared the resulting prices across systems, reducing the manual work required for repeated checks. The lesson is that testing should be designed into the pricing process from the beginning. A pricing platform’s built-in testing features are useful, but insurers still need to establish what must be tested across the complete operating environment.

Prepare teams for the work ahead

Pricing teams are often small. Giving them additional control over technology without addressing workload and support can create new bottlenecks. Before implementation, insurers should agree on who owns model assumptions, validates outputs, approves changes, authorizes releases, and responds to production problems. They should also establish how underwriting feedback reaches model developers.

Training should follow those responsibilities. External specialists can help bridge gaps across these disciplines, particularly during migration and the establishment of new working practices. Their contribution should include transferring knowledge and helping internal teams develop a sustainable process for future changes.

A greater role in business strategy

The opportunity extends beyond operational efficiency. Better-connected pricing capabilities can help actuaries and underwriters assess where an insurer should grow, which exposures warrant closer attention, and how changes in coverage or business mix affect expected performance.

Modern pricing platforms expand what actuarial, underwriting and technology teams these teams can accomplish together. Insurers will realize that opportunity by preparing their people as carefully as they prepare their systems – and giving them the support and accountability to turn better analysis into better insurance decisions.