The last 5 years has witnessed an explosive growth in ‘Insurtechs’, start-up tech businesses funded by a combination of silicon valley VC firms and non traditional sources of capital seeking outsized returns. These tech-driven, insurance-focused start-ups are establishing a presence at every level of the insurance value chain from providing tools to streamline underwriting to automating claims handling. The flood of investment together with the foothold that these new upstarts are obtaining is leaving the traditionally stable insurance world reeling. 

OVERVIEW

As software applications grow, they can have areas that become unused. Identifying and addressing this code can give customers a cleaner experience, make engineering more efficient, and reduce surface area to attacks.

This is our third and final post in the interview series with Cristian, our CEO at BindHQ. 

Today, we continue with our interview series with Cristian Joe, our CEO, as we discuss BindHQ’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Questions like “where are we?” and “where are we going?” only exist coherently within the context of “where have we come from?”. In the same way, understanding the history of a software project can help us to understand its trajectory and structure. 

Today we have the pleasure of interviewing our CEO, Cristian Joe, about our company’s story and its development. 

If your MGA or Insurtech business conducts any business in California, you should be aware of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a state law which places certain obligations on companies regarding consumer rights and data privacy. Even if your business is not based in California, the regulations apply to many companies who provide services to California residents. This means that any personal and commercial insurance client information for California-based clients or prospects, which is stored in your Agency Management System, is covered by the law and you need to know how to handle it from an operational perspective.

The metaphor of the budget is surprisingly helpful to engineers.

As an MGA executive, there’s a lot resting on your shoulders. On any given day, you need to wrestle with multiple reports ranging from those that give you the 30,000 foot view of your MGA’s performance, down to reports providing the granular details that enable you to manage your MGA’s book of business effectively. Be in no doubt - you need an Agency Management System you can trust – one which handles your data efficiently, acts reliably whenever you need any documents, and serves as the ultimate witness to your agency’s activities.

Here at BindHQ, we’re deeply invested in your success. Just like you, we come from traditional roots, founded by successful finance and insurance professionals rather than tech executives out of Silicon Valley looking for the next hot deal to enter and exit in 2 years. We are here to stay, and we want to be your partner.

Whether it’s frustrations from working with legacy AMS systems or grappling with disjointed, in-house attempts to store data in various Word or Excel documents, MGAs today run up against numerous tech-related challenges. Information and document storage, data analysis, regulatory compliance, audits and reporting - all of these aspects deserve your consideration. Trade-offs must be made. 

As your MGA scales its operations, it is critical for you to upgrade your tools in order to be able to handle an increased volume of data and to grow your book of business accordingly. A state-of-the-art agency management system (AMS) plays an important role in that conversation. While digital improvements are taking over the insurance supply chain at every level, you do not want your MGA to be left behind its competitors.

Our sales and marketing team have spent the last few weeks redesigning the BindHQ customer facing website - like all projects, we were balancing trade-offs between getting it perfect - and getting it launched. Recognizing that the perfect is the enemy of the good, we pulled the trigger on Monday.

For our industry, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a tremendous amount of change in a very short amount of time. With varying degrees of lockdowns and “shelter in place” orders ongoing, most companies have gone from being office-based to relying on distributed teams working remotely. This has, unsurprisingly, brought with it a whole host of new challenges.

At Owsy, the health and well-being of our people - our colleagues, clients, and partners - is our priority.  We know first-hand how important it is to have a knowledgeable and trusted partner, and we are meticulously following the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), our respective local governments, and health authorities.

A detailed review of an AMS (agency management system) is an opportunity for an enterprise to closely examine its business and make strategic decisions about the kind of agency it wants to become. Modern Agency management systems should allow independent agents to evolve to support the changing insurance landscape. Most Agency systems are in place for 5 to 10 years.

There are very few ways a C level executive of a mature insurance business can dramatically change the cost structure of their business today. The current economic climate forces agencies, MGA’s and insurers to face challenges including low interest rates, greater price transparency, few growth opportunities and sector consolidation. This has resulted in the management of costs as a key competitive advantage.

Here at Owsy we’re focused on making our users as effective as possible. We design, build, iterate and experiment with the goal of helping insurance companies do great things. This blog is intended to showcase some of the techniques we use to create products like BindHQ and communicate how we work as a whole.