Improving the Commercial Quoting Process: Quotey

A 2024 ICTA nomination

Toronto, ON (Feb. 7, 2024) – Quotey is a Canadian software provider which has developed transformational technology for the many thousands of commercial and farm insurance brokers across the country. It was formally launched, after beta, in October 2022, and now has over 90 brokerages and 700+ users on the platform.

As background, Commercial insurance is a long-standing and profitable marketplace for brokers and insurers. However, it is full of friction, pain and risk. For many years, the commercial lines market has been bereft of innovation – where insurers, ‘insurtechs’ and traditional BMS providers ignored the market in favour of digitizing personal lines.

As a result, the placement of commercial lines in 2023 typically involves a broker finding and completing PDF or Word applications; emailing to insurers; waiting days or weeks for responses; dealing with insurer rejection and / or answering a multitude of additional questions; spending hours analyzing quotes, making a recommendation without full information and communicating with clients. This painful process will often take many days to complete, consume hours of the broker’s time, and likely create substantial E&O exposure for the broker.

Quotey has been created to solve these issues and take the pain out of Commercial Lines. More specifically, here’s what Quotey does:

Dynamic Digital Applications

• Enables brokers to complete a simple, dynamic, digital application for any of their clients.
• Where auto and home are 2 products, Quotey provides the logic for over 1,500 different varieties of commercial product. Just type in the nature of the business, and Quotey will do the rest.
• Saves all information securely as it’s entered, which means it’s there to build over several client conversations if necessary, or there to update at renewal.
• Allows for digital collaboration with a simple workflow to share a link with the end-client, who can complete the information on their own time, and notify the broker of any changes when it’s done.
• Provides ‘always on’ help, offering insights to brokers on why certain questions are asked and what they mean. It helps the broker become experts on certain subjects, e.g. cyber, where they can ask questions from a position of knowledge.
• Prompts and allows brokers to upload and attach other information, e.g. certificates, photos, etc. as they go along.

Instant Quoting

• Whenever a broker completes an application, Quotey will automatically match the client with all relevant insurers in its marketplace.
• Multiple instant quotes will start appearing on the broker’s screen. For example, a broker could receive 10 contractor quotes in about 20 seconds today, which would otherwise take many days.
• Quotey analyzes the quotes to determine how well they match the needs of the client. This is an absolutely unique step for any product in Canada, where Quotey’s ‘Covermatch’ score gives the broker an instant idea of which quotes are the best fit for their client.

Quote Comparisons

• In addition to instant quotes, Quotey also enables the broker to compare all coverages, deductibles and limits in detail.
• Where home and auto policies are fairly consistent across insurers, this is not the case at all for commercial lines. A fairly low cost package might have 200+ coverages included, and insurers will differ greatly around what’s included. Quotey provides the details at the click of a button.
• Quotey also helps the broker to see how each option stacks up against client needs in detail.

Traditional Marketing Management

• Not everything will fit a digital model. Especially for commercial, many risks will require review by underwriters prior to quoting. Quotey has a solution for this too!
• Brokers have a simple “Send to Insurers” button. From there, Quotey will recommend a list of insurers who should have some appetite for the end-customer. Brokers can select as many markets as they want, click a button, and Quotey will send a traditional application to them.
• As an added feature, brokers can customize their contact list for all their insurance partners in Quotey. For example, if they have a dedicated underwriter with a particular insurer, they can add and manage this in Quotey so that the entire team sends submissions to the right people.

Client Communication

• Often, keeping clients up to date is half the battle. However, it can be extremely time consuming pulling together communications and presentations which showcase the work done by the broker. So we’ve added highly customizable ‘Client Presentations’ as a feature.
• With a few clicks, brokers can configure the perfect presentation for their clients which is white labeled for their brokerage. Include details of the brokerage or the team with ease. More impressive, however, is the broker’s ability to include comparable quotes for the customer and be fully in the driving seat around what is on view and what’s hidden.
• Most recently, we’ve now given brokers payment integration into this process, where we can obtain financing quotes as part of our workflow, which a broker can include in the presentation at the click of a button together with other product recommendations.

There are many more features such as certificate management, and new broker ideas are constantly being implemented as we endeavor to be the preferred way that commercial and farm brokers place business in the market.

Many of these features are the first of their kind in Canada, and help brokers transform the cycle time for selling commercial insurance from days and weeks to mere minutes, while providing the client with an added level of confidence around their purchase.

Business value

Quoting time and outcomes:

• Average quote response times vary greatly in the market, but generally accepted that it takes 3+ days (optimistically) to obtain more than 1 quote from insurers. We reduce this 3+ day timeframe to 20 seconds = 99.99% improvement in quote time.
• We estimate this time improvement to have a 20%+ impact on a broker’s bind rate, i.e. provide quotes and comparisons in a single call rather than following up next week.

Broker Efficiency:

• We estimate our simple workflow automations can reduce a broker’s time spent on key processes between 50% – 99% depending on the workflow. For example, a detailed client presentation that might take several hours of effort can be done on Quotey in less than 5 seconds.

E&O:

• It’s far too early to determine the E&O exposure benefit of Quotey as these can materialize years after policy inception. However, the transparency of information provided to the broker and client will vastly reduce E&O exposure for the broker.

Insurer Efficiency:

• Our insurer partners also see substantial efficiency benefits through Quotey. The general rule of thumb is that for every 10 submissions, they will decline 6, quote 4 and win 1, i.e. a 10% submission conversion rate, and a 25% quote conversion rate. Quotey removes the manual effort for insurers, meaning they only work on the binds, not the quotes.

About Quotey

Founded in 2020, Quotey Inc. is a privately held Canadian technology company based in Whitby, Ontario, established to serve the commercial insurance industry. It works with multiple brokerages and carriers to create a simpler, more efficient and ultimately better process for securing commercial insurance coverage for clients.

• Learn more about Quotey in the InsurTech Spotlight.

For more information, visit quotey.io.

SOURCE: Quotey