April 3, 2024
With Nick Kidd—CEO & Co-Founder, Quotey
I love the insurance world and the people in it. But I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the hurdles and pain points involved in the simplest client interactions.
Our industry is based on information that moves in both directions between customers, brokers and underwriters. In Personal Lines, this information is systematically managed and enables various workflows like rating and product comparisons that make everyone’s life easier.
But when it comes to Commercial Lines, information typically lives in PDFs from insurers that are stored on a broker’s BMS. It prevents a whole range of workflow possibilities and is the cause of many pain points throughout the client lifecycle. PDFs are where information goes to die.
Over the last ten years, I’ve been asking whether brokers can complete a single application for their clients and instantly use the information to check the appetites of insurers, get quotes, compare coverages and create client facing documents at the click of a button. I eventually decided to do something about it, and Quotey is the outcome.
I had no idea what form it would ultimately take, but knew that in order to be successful, it had to be built within a brokerage rather than outside it. This is where our earliest supporters and partners come into the story, starting with Adam Mitchell from Mitch Insurance Brokers.
Adam was excited at the idea and gracious enough to let me test initial concepts within his brokerage, leverage key insurer relationships and find out where this rabbit hole could lead. Several months later, we were incubating an early version of Quotey in Mitch and AI Insurance in Ontario, Bauld Insurance in Nova Scotia and Guild Insurance in Manitoba. The process of building the product with their support and feedback was invaluable and likely the key to our success.
One Year In
Since launching at the end of 2022, over 100 brokerages and hundreds of individual brokers use Quotey daily. While Ontario is our largest market, we now have brokers in almost every Province and Territory.
We have nine insurance companies quoting today, and eleven more going live in the next couple of months. Quite a few others are at different stages of the build cycle. By summer we’ll have 20 or more insurers on board, quoting hundreds of commercial business classes and farm. By end of 2024 we expect that number to be over 30.
The Effects
Brokers are saving a substantial amount of time using Quotey. Over 60% are saving at least 30 minutes with every new client, and 40% are saving over an hour. Our average user is saving a little over 3 hours a week—if you’re a brokerage with 10 people on your commercial team, Quotey will give you the lift of an additional person.
Interestingly, we’ve also had brokers tell us that they’re selling between 25–50% more new commercial business with Quotey. The compound impact of this on a brokerage’s revenues and value over time is substantial.
We’re quantifying over time, but expect a brokerage’s E&O exposure will reduce as Quotey helps teams ensure they have a thorough understanding of their client’s exposure and presents options with greater transparency. One of Quotey’s major features is helping brokers establish client needs and instantly comparing how various insurer options stack up.
What’s Next
Our primary focus is to continue adding products and insurers, but there are many other key developments in the pipeline. Topping the list is BMS integration—we’re working on solutions with many of Canada’s providers to ensure that anything added to Quotey is seamlessly updated in the broker’s BMS.
We’re also adding various broker programs to facilitate the quote, bind and issue process. Another goal is to build out a fully bilingual product to support the many brokerages in Quebec who are looking to implement in their offices.
We always have ideas of what we’re going to build next, but inevitably the pipeline for new features is shaped in a different way by the brokers who use Quotey every day. Our system is agile. Changes can sometimes be made in hours, not months. It’s incredible to see how Quotey evolves under the influence of our users. We’re incredibly excited to be part of this landscape and continue supporting brokerages from Ontario and beyond in the years ahead.