Aviva halves critical illness underwriting review times with generative AI medical report summarisation

Aviva's underwriters faced a significant bottleneck in processing individual critical illness insurance applications that required medical reports. These documents are inherently lengthy and complex, demanding specialist review before any underwriting decision can be reached. In a protection market where speed directly affects whether customers secure coverage in time, delays at the front end of the application journey carry real consequences for applicants, advisers, and the insurer alike. Without tooling to compress review time, underwriters were spending disproportionate effort on document triage rather than decision-making — limiting throughput and slowing the customer journey at its most critical stage.

Aviva extended its generative AI underwriting summarisation tool — originally launched for individual life insurance applications in November 2025, and the first of its kind in the UK protection market — to cover critical illness applications. The tool uses generative AI to analyse incoming medical reports and distil them into concise summaries containing only the information relevant to the reviewing specialist. Rather than building a new system, Aviva re-used and extended the existing capability, validating accuracy across the broader and more complex range of conditions and risk factors inherent in critical illness underwriting. The same architecture also supports post-application auditing, demonstrating integration depth beyond the initial decision workflow.

The AI summarisation tool reduced underwriter review time per case by approximately 50%, the headline outcome from extensive internal testing across critical illness conditions and risk factors. Aviva reported high accuracy levels throughout, consistent with results from the earlier life insurance deployment. Key outcomes include:

• ~50% reduction in underwriter time spent reviewing each case
• High accuracy validated across a wider range of conditions and risk factors than the original life insurance implementation
• Post-application auditing capability enabled as an additional workflow benefit
• Faster turnaround from point of application to underwriting decision, improving outcomes for customers and advisers

• Extend proven capabilities before building new ones: reusing the life insurance summarisation tool for critical illness accelerated deployment and de-risked accuracy validation.
• Target the front end of the customer journey: speed gains at the application stage deliver outsized value — reducing wait times for customers who need protection quickly.
• Phase rollouts by complexity: moving from life insurance to critical illness to income protection allows confidence in AI accuracy to be established incrementally before tackling harder cases.
• Depth of integration matters: extending the tool to post-application auditing multiplied its value without requiring a separate implementation effort.