In the past year, commercial insurance technology start-up Broker Buddha made great strides with $5 million in new backing led by global insurer and reinsurer SiriusPoint, SOC 2 data security certification, and adding its 100th agency user to its platform.
Launched in 2018, Broker Buddha’s platform supports the handling of insurance carrier supplemental applications, the specialized forms that agents use for submissions from clients. The platform uses online data capture for insurers’ front offices to engage and interact with customers.
Jason Keck, CEO of Broker Buddha, joined in May 2017 when the company was being incubated by Interplay, a New York-based venture capital firm with an incubator arm supporting early-stage companies. Keck came to Broker Buddha with 20 years of experience at established companies such as Accenture and Nextel, as well as newer consumer start-ups such as Shazam and Tumblr. He connected with Interplay while working on an earlier venture. Interplay, in turn, connected Keck to Founder Shield, a digital agency that spun off its supplementary application for carriers into Broker Buddha.
“I give a lot of credit to Interplay,” says Keck. “It’s more than just an incubator and a venture arm. It’s a community of entrepreneurs. They have a talent pipeline through both their companies and the incubator. They have a network of companies, entrepreneurs, and applicants that we're able to draw from.”
Broker Buddha began by serving mostly smaller insurance agencies. Keck attributes its recent growth to a shift in focus to larger agencies. “About two years ago, we started focusing more on larger or middle market agencies. And the business really skyrocketed,” he says. “As you get into larger agencies, they tend to have either operations managers or IT leaders who are trained at rolling out new software and new tools. So they're much more effective at adoption and engagement and usage. When we did that, a lot changed for us as a business. The revenues went up, the engagement went up, the usage went up and the awareness went up.”
Broker Buddha has many middle market size agencies on its roster, particularly firms focused on specific regions in the US, and is now actively selling its platform to Tier 1 large agencies.
What’s attracting these agencies’ interest? “We’re like TurboTax for commercial insurance,” Keck says. “We’re replacing emails, paper, PDFs and spreadsheets–and printers and scanners–with a single online experience with integrated signatures. Almost every insurance submission or application typically requires some form of documents to be completed and signed. We are replacing that paper based process with a seamless online experience.”
Keck sees Broker Buddha having an impact in the commercial insurance space and has targeted plans for the future.
“Monotonous administrative work frustrates insurance professionals. It makes it unattractive to work in the industry,” he says. “We’re not just transforming the ease of doing business for commercial insurance, but we're transforming the lives of the people who work in insurance so that they can enjoy their days and their job satisfaction goes up.”
Keck hears suggestions that Broker Buddha extend its platform to banking or other sectors, but intends to keep it focused within commercial insurance. “We specialize in data capture for applications. Eventually, it would be the exchange of that information from the agent to wholesalers, MGAs or carriers,” he says.
“The focus is on the agent because the agent is right in the middle of that transaction,” Keck adds. “The majority of commercial insurance still goes through an agent because policies are complicated. What coverages you need to get and which carrier you should choose is not something that most business owners have any experience with. So the agents will remain at the center and they just need better tools to do what they do.”
