Familiarity, Obedience, Loss Aversion: Unconscious Bias In Underwriting

“You get towards the end of the month and you don’t have your premium budget met yet. How does your brain process that next opportunity that comes across your desk?” asks A. Morris Tooker, head of Middle Market at The Hartford. “The reality is you process it differently, because you have different pressures that you face and it’s not conscious.” In all activities in life, we make decisions influenced by our unconscious biases — and, as Tooker has studied, underwriting is no different. Just as in other aspects of life and work, we need to realize the biases we have, and work to mitigate their effects on our decision-making, he says.