Concirrus and Applied Aviation win AI Implementation of the Year at US Insurance Awards 2025, cutting aviation underwriting from 36 hours to 5 minutes

Concirrus and Applied Aviation Win 'AI Implementation of the Year' at US Insurance Awards

October 2, 2025 - Concirrus and North American aviation insurer Applied Aviation won the 'AI Implementation of the Year' at the US Insurance Awards 2025. The recognition centers on Applied Aviation's rollout of Concirrus's aviation-focused large language model (LLM) platform to modernise underwriting without disrupting day-to-day operations.

The driver was simple: aviation risk analysis and quoting were slow and manual. According to the companies, the platform now reads and interprets broker submissions in minutes, replacing workflows that could run up to 36 hours.

What changed for Applied Aviation

• Processing time per risk dropped from as long as 36 hours to under five minutes.
• Submission ingestion, risk triage, and pricing are automated within existing workflows, reducing manual data entry.
• Improved underwriting consistency and regulatory compliance with clear audit trails.
• Faster feedback cycles to brokers and cleaner handoffs across the underwriting process.
• Business impact: more than double the gross written premium without a proportional increase in headcount.

Steven Allen, president of Applied Aviation, said the collaboration improved responsiveness to brokers and insureds, tightened compliance and underwriting consistency, and freed underwriters to focus on strategic risk assessment and client service.

Andy Yeoman, CEO at Concirrus, noted that the win highlights practical, measurable gains when AI is built on deep industry knowledge and applied to enhance underwriters' expertise rather than replace it.

Why this matters for specialty underwriting

Specialty lines depend on nuanced judgment. This implementation shows AI can shoulder ingestion, structuring, and initial analysis while underwriters focus on decisions and negotiation. Crucially, it was integrated into existing tools and workflows-no rip-and-replace.

Concirrus's platform targets specialty and commercial sectors with automation, data-driven decisioning, and real-time portfolio views across property, aviation, transportation, and marine. For carriers and MGAs, the takeaway is clear: start with high-friction steps and build around underwriting judgment, governance, and measurability.

How carriers and MGAs can apply this now

• Identify bottlenecks that slow quotes: submission reading, triage, and referral management.
• Integrate AI where the work already happens (workbench, policy admin, CRM) to reduce adoption friction.
• Define governance early: model oversight, audit trails, documentation standards, and regulatory checkpoints.
• Set clear KPIs: cycle time, quote-to-bind ratio, hit ratio by segment, loss ratio impact, and broker NPS.
• Keep underwriters in the loop: require rationale surfaces and editable outputs to preserve judgment.
• Pilot on a narrow class, iterate quickly, then expand to adjacent products or geographies.
• Align pricing models with AI outputs to ensure consistent rating, limit profiles, clauses, and appetite.
• Secure data pipelines end-to-end: PII controls, retention policies, and vendor risk management.

Context and next steps

For teams considering similar moves, look for platforms that can digest unstructured submissions, standardise data, recommend pricing actions, and provide transparent reasoning. The goal is consistent decisions, tighter control, and materially faster broker response-without adding headcount.

For background on the awards program, see the US Insurance Awards from Business Insurance here.

If you're planning AI upskilling for underwriting and operations teams, explore curated training by role at Complete AI Training.