Surety modernization is accelerating, but not always evenly. While some firms are pushing ahead with automation and integration, others are still navigating legacy constraints and manual-heavy workflows.
According to Everest Group’s Practice Director Aurindum Mukherjee, the industry’s digital playbook is becoming clearer. We asked him which technology trends will matter most for improving productivity, scalability, and operational efficiency in Surety. Here’s what he highlighted.
APIs: Connecting the Industry
APIs (application programming interfaces) are rules and protocols that allow different software programs to communicate with each other. That may sound unexciting compared to some technological breakthroughs, but APIs are the fundamental technology that enables all Surety parties—including carriers, brokers, principals and contractors—to efficiently work together.
According to Mukherjee, APIs will only become more important. “Since Surety tech is moving beyond basic automation, the next phase will be defined by connected intelligent execution, focused on reducing friction across underwriting and operations,” he says. “Therefore, one of the most important trends to watch will be API-first connectivity.”
“Currently, communication between Surety carrier and broker systems is very fragmented,” he adds, “so a lot of communication is manual, via phone and email. But with APIs, carrier platforms will increasingly integrate into broker workflows for submissions and document exchange. That shift will fundamentally change how data flows across the ecosystem by improving speed, transparency, and coordination without forcing brokers to use multiple carrier-specific portals. The industry needs to integrate to automate operations, and that will happen via the use of APIs.”
STP: End-To-End Automation
Straight-through processing (STP) is one of Surety tech’s big goals. It is already happening for some transactions, but Mukherjee believes its use will expand considerably.
“STP is already prevalent in other areas of specialty insurance, such as the P&C market, but I think it will pick up more in the Surety segment, too, particularly for higher volume and repeatable bond types,” he says.
“What works especially well is a blended model, where full-service channels handle simpler inquiries and transactions, and underwriting teams spend more time on judgment-intensive cases rather than transactional processing. As carriers continue to standardize their rules, more of the routine work will flow automatically end-to-end. Exceptions will be routed to human underwriters. This will dramatically improve productivity and reduce servicing costs while also improving broker and end customer experience.”
Mukherjee thinks the expansion of STP will focus on “transactions with the highest volumes. Not every bond needs to be fully automated, but transactional and repeatable bonds absolutely do. So standardizing the eligibility rules and routing exceptions to underwriters in these segments will unlock scale without increasing headcount.”
AI: Applying It With Discipline
“No conversation about tech trends is complete without mentioning AI,” says Mukherjee. “But the technology needs to be adopted pragmatically, with discipline. AI’s role in Surety will expand gradually, with the greatest impact coming from productivity in areas like summarization and workflow prioritization.”
“The impact of AI today is still fairly modest and very targeted. Most Surety organizations are still in the early stages, with pilots, proof of concept, or narrowed deployments, rather than broad-scale adoption. So right now the strongest use cases are around productivity and support. This includes intelligent document processing, summarizing submissions and financials, and performing consistency checks. These are practical applications that reduce manual work without changing how decisions are ultimately made.”
“Looking ahead, AI’s role will expand as its quality improves over time. It can help with underwriting consistency and surface early warning signals around ongoing projects. It will also be used more for managing document-heavy workflows.”
“The carriers that get the most value from AI will start with repeatable low-risk tasks, prove the return on investment first and then scale gradually. At the end of the day, it will be an enabler of better human decision making, not a substitute.”
The Human Factor Remains
“Surety will remain a human-in-the-loop business, with tech designed to augment human expertise, rather than replace it,” says Mukherjee. He explains that while AI will increasingly support decision-making, it won’t take on that role.
“AI will ultimately be able to summarize all the data around a bond and bring all the information in front of the underwriter, but the human would still need to make decisions enabled by that data,” he says. “That’s because Surety decisions are complex, relationship-driven and highly contextual.”
Furthermore, legal obligations reinforce the need for human oversight: “Surety is very regulated, so insurers have to be able to explain the decisions they take,” notes Mukherjee. “Auditability is very important. Insurers sometimes have to justify to regulators why they rejected a claim or denied a bond.”
Even as automation and AI reshape Surety workflows, the business itself remains deeply human. As Mukherjee says, “The real value of Surety technology will be in augmenting human expertise, rather than replacing underwriters.”
