Retail brokerages and large commercial/specialty carriers have attempted to automate the heavy lifting of everyday new and renewal business transactions for decades. A handful of very large brokerages and carriers have developed point-to-point interfaces, but these were often complex and too costly to build or maintain.
In response, several new InsureTech startups have developed solutions to address pain points like gathering new business data, filling out the numerous types of insurance applications required by carriers, and tracking submissions and quote status. These platforms primarily fall into two categories:
- Digital Broker Platforms (DBPs), which focus on the needs of wholesale agents and brokers. They provide functionality such as integrating with an AMS, mapping fields to carrier new and renewal business applications, and generating applications via paper or PDF. Examples of these companies include Bold Penguin, TowerIQ, Indio, and Modern Submissions.
- Automated Intake Applications (AIAs), which offer carriers the ability to ingest submission or application documents for conversion into data in their submission and underwriting systems. These solutions use AI to scan documentation as well as natural language processing (NLP) and name entity recognition (NER) to analyze unstructured data and classify data elements. Some startups offering AIAs include Chisel AI, DataCubes, and Synechron.
Digital broker platforms and automated intake applications have yet to be broadly adopted, but they are providing long-overdue solutions to many of the problems that retail brokerages and large commercial/specialty carriers face. Though the space is still emerging, we could be seeing the early stages of automation between brokers and carriers. See our recent Broker-Carrier Automation report for more on the topic.
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