Gisha George, with nearly two decades of experience in the general insurance industry, leads Commercial Lines and Reinsurance at Liberty General Insurance. She brings deep expertise in Liability, Cyber, Marine, Property, and Health, driving product innovation, data-driven underwriting, and technology integration to deliver future-ready risk solutions.
Integrating disciplined processes with purpose-driven digital strategies sets the stage for sustainable profitable growth and elevated customer outcomes.
In today’s dynamic insurance environment, scaling product portfolios is no longer a linear expansion of operations. It’s a complex orchestration of robust processes, intelligent automation, and technology-led agility. The industry is undergoing an unmistakable shift—from legacy-heavy, compliance-dominated structures to fluid, responsive ecosystems that anticipate risk, personalize coverage, and deliver value at scale.
This evolution isn’t simply a response to changing customer demands or competitive pressure—it’s being propelled by opportunity. Across Asia and especially in India, rapid digital penetration, rising insurance awareness, and the explosion of data sources are converging. This confluence has created an environment where the ability to scale is defined not by size, but by capability.
Yet capability must be architected with intent.
The Role of Process Excellence
For insurers to scale meaningfully, the foundation must be process excellence. This often gets overshadowed by more glamorous digital ambitions, but the truth is: poor process undermines even the best technology. Product design, underwriting rules, pricing algorithms, claims workflows—every element must be built on clarity, speed, and consistency.
Process excellence doesn’t mean perfection—it means a system designed to learn, refine, and respond.
It means creating feedback loops where data from the field sharpens pricing, claim outcomes inform coverage tweaks, and partner inputs lead to simplification.
Automation & Intelligent Decision-Making
In this context, automation emerges as a non-negotiable. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is already delivering value across insurers globally—whether in document ingestion, policy issuance, or reconciliation¹. But automation alone is not transformation. It must be layered with intelligent decision-making systems.
Predictive analytics, machine learning models, and AI-based triaging are enabling insurers to go beyond volume processing to value-creating processing². The result: faster cycle times, improved accuracy, and scalable operations with leaner teams.
The Evolution of Underwriting
The underwriting function, in particular, is being reshaped. Traditional underwriting has relied heavily on historical loss patterns and human judgment. But in a post-pandemic world, where volatility is the norm, static underwriting frameworks fall short.
Data-driven, dynamic, and modular underwriting—fueled by diverse data sets including telematics, IoT feeds, behavioral analytics, and third-party risk indices—is the way forward.
Commercial lines, especially, demand nuanced risk assessments that can no longer be delivered solely through templates and checklists.
AI-Enhanced Underwriting Judgment
More forward-looking insurers are now embedding AI into underwriting to enable segmentation at a level of granularity that simply wasn’t feasible a few years ago. This does not eliminate the underwriter—it elevates them. The underwriter becomes a strategic risk advisor, interpreting signals, validating outliers, and shaping products that are as differentiated as the clients they serve.
The Power and Risk of Generative AI
Equally crucial is the role of generative AI, which is beginning to find real-world use cases in insurance product scaling. From automated generation of policy wordings to intelligent summarization of regulatory changes and real-time customer response frameworks, GenAI tools, when used responsibly, can drastically reduce time-to-market⁵. However, responsible deployment requires rigorous governance.
Accuracy, explainability, bias mitigation, and compliance alignment must be embedded into every GenAI-powered workflow. Without this, innovation risks outpacing oversight.
Digitally Empowering Distribution
Beyond internal processes, distribution scalability is another axis that demands digital innovation.
India’s insurance ecosystem is still heavily partner-led—agents, brokers, POSPs, dealerships, and bancassurance networks remain primary growth levers.
Enabling this distributed force through digital platforms—mobile CRMs, quote engines, commission dashboards, and onboarding workflows—can transform their productivity. When these partners are equipped with real-time visibility and decision support tools, they become brand ambassadors, not just sellers.
Humanizing the Customer Journey
The customer journey, too, must evolve in parallel. Insurance is often described as a low-touch industry—but in truth, it’s one of the highest-emotion industries. Customers interact when they’re worried, hurt, or uncertain. Scaling products without scaling experience results in churn.
A digitally integrated journey—from awareness and education to purchase, service, and claims—is no longer optional. Personalization, proactive nudges, self-service capabilities, and empathetic digital interfaces will define customer retention and advocacy.
Data Governance: The Foundation of Trust
But no digital transformation is complete without addressing data. As insurers adopt multi-source analytics and embedded systems, the demand for high-quality, compliant, and secure data architectures is growing⁴. Cloud-native environments, real-time integration layers, and data governance frameworks must mature in tandem. Without this, the risk of model fatigue, regulatory backlash, or data misuse becomes very real.
Culture as the Core Multiplier
Another, often overlooked element in the scaling conversation is culture. Process and digital ambition will always fall short if people resist change. The insurance industry has, for decades, been built on legacy knowledge and institutional memory.
Changing mindsets—encouraging agile methods, promoting experimentation, and re-skilling teams—is arguably the most complex yet most rewarding part of the journey.
True scaling demands not just platforms and processes, but also people who believe in their evolution.
India’s Decade of Opportunity
From a macro perspective, the Indian general insurance sector is entering a decade of exponential potential. The regulator’s push for insurance inclusion, the rise of platform-based distribution, and the integration of technology into every aspect of consumer life means the conditions for scale have never been better. But how we scale—ethically, efficiently, and intelligently—will define the resilience and relevance of insurers over the long term.
The Single Vision Ahead
In conclusion, scaling insurance products through process excellence and digital innovation isn’t a dual strategy—it’s a single vision. The processes are the rails, the digital innovation is the engine, and together, they create momentum that is sustainable, measurable, and responsive. As industry leaders, our role is to ensure this momentum is directed towards customer value, risk clarity, and long-term trust.
Because in a world of infinite choice and rapid change, scale isn’t just about how many policies we sell. It’s about how many lives we meaningfully protect—at the right time, with the right solution, through the right experience.
