How CFC is trying to close a small business insurance gap | Insurance Business America
Using technology to conquer a market of 33 million people
professional risks
By Jen Frost
Smaller companies continue to face hurdles when it comes to accessing some commercial insurance products, a senior CFC executive at the company said as she shared how the MGA hopes to use technology to address this issue.
“We recognized that there were significant barriers to entry for so many customers [to specialty commercial insurance]CFC USA CEO Shannon Groeber told Insurance Business at the 2023 CFC Summit in Chicago.
Because it was difficult for clients to fill out detailed applications, in some cases, according to Groeber, agents were “very intimidated when it came to talking about so many different products and so many different solutions – the natural tendency was to just walk around. “Get away from this conversation or don’t follow it up.”
CFC uses technology to scan for digital risks for its cyber policyholders, track IP addresses and the IP addresses they communicate with and scan for vulnerabilities, event attendees heard during a session. The idea behind the latest update was to expand on this and collect additional available data points, from approvals and registrations to new products and partnerships, attendees were told.
“[We realized] If we simply broadened our scope, we could start collecting additional information; more things like risk for tech companies or for small professional service providers in the US,” Groeber said during a presentation.
The result, Groeber told Insurance Business, is that brokers can get more quotes from the 33 million small businesses in the US without having to request such detailed information. It’s a task that has previously proven to be a daunting task for policyholders and has ultimately resulted in customers failing to take out insurance coverage.
“Often there are only a few employees, maybe there is a single business owner, and the applications ask a lot of questions that they may not necessarily have answers to or that are not relevant to their business,” Groeber said of target companies. “So we thought, if we can supplement that information, we can get information that we think is valuable, rather than asking them to provide it to us. Then we can make more offers to our agents for their clients and help them make that sale.” give them more detailed information.”
“Now brokers can offer multiple product lines at the same time – we have the technology and different professional liability insurance that they can offer at the same time and present together,” said Groeber. “For 20 years that we’ve been talking about cyber, there have been assumptions that some of that risk spills over to E&O.
“It makes sense to consolidate these coverages with the same provider and reduce concerns about which policy will respond.”
There are plans to further expand the platform and add CFC’s full range of management liability products.
“[We want to focus] about those small businesses, sole proprietors, or those that have few employees but actually tailor them to their specific concerns rather than talking about D&O [directors & officers] in the context of large public companies, where these risks are not implemented and therefore the products available do not necessarily create this value,” said Groeber.
CFC is currently working on an additional D&O insurance agreement, which Groeber says is an effective mimic of what the company has already done in the cyber space, but with events specifically aimed at senior executives.
“They can enjoy personal protection, they can know that if their reputation is specifically damaged or if there is misinformation on a website, they can know that we will help them remove that information, restore their reputation and bring them back to where they were before the cyber attack .” events,” said Groeber. “And if they suffer a personal financial loss as a result of this cyber event, we will cover that as well.”
How do you serve your overburdened small business customers? Let us know in the comments.
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