Underwriting

The term "underwriting" derives from the Lloyd's of London insurance market. Financial backers (or risk takers), who would accept some of the risk on a given venture (historically a sea voyage with associated risks of shipwreck) in exchange for a premium, would literally write their names under the risk information that was written on a Lloyd's slip created for this purpose.[2][3]

In the financial primary market, securities underwriting is the process by which investment banks raise investment capital from buyers on behalf of corporations and governments by issuing securities (such as stocks or bonds). As an underwriter, the investment bank guarantees a price for these securities, facilitates the issuance of the securities, and then sells them to the public (or retains them for their own proprietary account).[4] This process is often seen in initial public offerings (IPOs), where investment banks help a corporation raise funds from the public. The underwriter is obligated to purchase the entire issue at a predetermined price before reselling the securities in the market.[5] Should they not be able to find buyers, they will have to hold some securities themselves. To reduce the risk, they may form a syndicate with other investment banks. Each bank will buy a portion of the security issue, and typically resell securities from that portion to the public.[6] Underwriters make their profit from the price difference (called "underwriting spread") between the price they pay the issuer and what they collect from buyers or from broker-dealers who buy portions of the offering.

The services provided in the process of underwriting include:

1. Giving advice on whether to issue stocks or bonds, the timing of issuance (ideally, corporations should sell securities when they will obtain the highest possible price). Underwriters also have to determine at what price the security should be sold.[7]
2. Filing documents: assisting companies with making the filings required by financial authorities. Companies issuing new securities to the general public must file a registration statement detailing their financial conditions, management, competition, industry, experience, funding purposes, and securities' risk assessment. A portion of this statement is reproduced in a document called a prospectus, which investors can access to obtain information about new securities.[8]
3. Underwriting: A company sells the entire issue to the underwriter at an agreed price. The underwriter will then sell it to the public at a higher price to achieve a profit, to the extent that it does not retain part of the issue as a proprietary holding.[6]

In banking, underwriting is the detailed credit analysis preceding the granting of a loan, based on credit information furnished by the borrower; such underwriting falls into several areas:

• Consumer loan underwriting includes the verification of such items as employment history, salary and financial statements; publicly available information, such as the borrower's credit history, which is detailed in a credit report; and the lender's evaluation of the borrower's credit needs and ability to pay. Examples include mortgage underwriting.
• Commercial (or business) underwriting consists of the evaluation of financial information provided by small businesses including analysis of the business balance sheet including tangible net worth, the ratio of debt to worth (leverage) and available liquidity (current ratio). Analysis of the income statement typically includes revenue trends, gross margin, profitability, and debt service coverage.

Underwriting can also refer to the purchase of corporate bonds, commercial paper, government securities, municipal general-obligation bonds by a commercial bank or dealer bank for its own account or for resale to investors. Bank underwriting of corporate securities is carried out through separate holding-company affiliates, called securities affiliates or Section 20 affiliates.

Of late, the discourse on underwriting has been dominated by the advent of machine learning in this space. These profound technological innovations are altering the way traditional underwriting scorecards have been built, and are displacing human underwriters with automation. Natural language understanding allows the consideration of more sources of information to assess risk than used previously.[9] These algorithms typically use modern data sources such as SMS / Email for banking information, location data to verify addresses, and so on. Several firms are trying to build models that can gauge a customer's willingness to pay using social media data by applying natural language understanding algorithms which essentially try to analyse and quantify a person's popularity / likability and so on, with the premise being that people scoring high on these parameters are less likely to default on a loan. However, this area is still vastly subjective.

Insurance underwriters evaluate the risk and exposures of potential clients. They decide how much coverage the client should receive, how much they should pay for it, and whether to accept the risk. Underwriting involves measuring risk exposure and determining the premium that needs to be charged to insure that risk. The function of the underwriter is to protect the company's book of business from risks that they feel will make a loss and issue insurance policies at a premium that is commensurate with the exposure presented by a risk.

Each insurance company has its own set of underwriting guidelines to help the underwriter determine whether or not the company should accept the risk. The information used to evaluate the risk of an applicant for insurance will depend on the type of coverage involved. For example, in underwriting automobile coverage, an individual's driving record is critical. However, the type of automobile is actually far more critical. As part of the underwriting process for life or health insurance, medical underwriting may be used to examine the applicant's health status (other factors may be considered as well, such as occupation and risky pursuits) and decide whether the policy can be issued on the standard terms applicable to the customer's age. The factors that insurers use to classify risks are generally objective, clearly related to the likely cost of providing coverage, practical to administer, consistent with applicable law, and designed to protect the long-term viability of the insurance program.[10]

The underwriters may decline the risk, or may provide a quotation in which the premiums have been loaded (including the amount needed to generate a profit, in addition to covering expenses[11]) or in which various exclusions have been stipulated, which restrict the circumstances under which a claim would be paid. Depending on the type of insurance product (line of business), insurance companies use automated underwriting systems to encode these rules, and reduce the amount of manual work in processing quotations and policy issuance. This is especially the case for certain simpler life or personal lines (auto, homeowners) insurance. Some insurance companies, however, rely on agents to underwrite for them. This arrangement allows an insurer to operate in a market closer to its clients without having to establish a physical presence.

Two major categories of exclusion in insurance underwriting are moral hazard and correlated losses.[12] With a moral hazard, the consequences of the customer's actions are insured, making the customer more likely to take costly actions. For example, bedbugs are typically excluded from homeowners' insurance to avoid paying for the consequence of recklessly bringing in a used mattress.[12] Insured events are generally those outside the control of the customer, for example in life insurance, death by automobile accident is typically covered, but death by suicide is typically not covered. Correlated losses are those that can affect a large number of customers at the same time, thus potentially bankrupting the insurance company. This is why typical homeowner's policies cover damage from fire or falling trees (usually affecting an individual house), but not floods or earthquakes (which affect many houses at the same time).[12]

For all types of insurance underwriting, advice and assistance is often provided by reinsurers, who of course have an interest in accepting risks on appropriate terms.

• Book building
• Financial roadshows
• Guidewire Software
• Predictive analytics
• Underwriting contract

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