Buying commercial insurance is still too hard.

Business owners applying for insurance find themselves spending time filling out paper forms, going back and forth over email, and waiting days or weeks to get quotes. 
 
94% of commercial insurance premium in the UK is brokered. The broker’s job is to get businesses the most appropriate insurance at the best available price. However, around 75% of commercial insurance brokers’ time is spent on re-keying data sent by customers or insurers. Brokers also work extremely hard on chasing underwriters, trying to get a full view of the prices available on the market and therefore sadly far less time than they would like on talking to customers, gauging their risk and helping them navigate the complicated world of insurance. 

Carriers worry that they get incomplete information on policyholders, that they are reduced to targeting the lowest common denominator of underwriting criteria and spend huge amounts of money adding data from external sources that they should be getting directly from the customer. 
 
The core problem is that the business’s data is too hard to move between everyone involved. The default mechanism remains pdfs and excels flying around over email, with all the cost, confusion and complexity that that creates. 

We are building a platform which solves this data transmission problem, allowing everyone in the transaction to see exactly where they are and how they stand. 

The Recorder product is made up of three main parts: 

For the customer: An SME data collection and policy administration portal 

We provide white-labelled methods for brokers to engage with their customers and prospects online, with a tool to collect the core information for requesting a quote, including financial and operational data. The portal will allow customers to see where they are in the process, the state of their applications, and any additional questions from underwriters, and review and update their policies during their cover's lifetime. 

For brokers: A relational database that integrates with everything else they use 

We will provide a core customer database for brokers to store and update information on their leads, clients and their policies. It will be an open platform, primarily designed to power internal operations within the brokerage and able to integrate with brokers’ existing systems such as automated callers, email marketing platforms, accounting tools and CRM systems. The vast majority of commercial brokers are a long way behind similar professional services providers in terms of technology, and opening up their internal systems is the first step towards improvement. 

For insurers: An API connectivity platform to quote and bind 

We will provide an API platform that allows brokers to request quotes on behalf of their customers from insurers for specific coverage. In the next ten years, insurers which do not offer APIs for their most common commercial products will be left behind the rest of the industry. APIs hosted and managed by insurers will allow much more dynamic underwriting, with premiums priced according to the actual risks in their business. Distribution will also become much more simple, with brokers hitting just a few endpoints in order to quote a customer instantly, seeing across the whole of market and allowing them to focus on what is actually different about each insurer’s coverage. 

At our last business, we saw the power of modern data infrastructure in building better products for small businesses. At Recorder, we plan to become the default data plumbing supplier to the commercial insurance industry, helping customers, brokers and insurers buy and build better insurance for everyone. 
 
We have built the first version of the platform with a small group of forward-thinking brokers and carriers who see the opportunity here and have been unbelievably helpful with their feedback and time – we would love for you to join them. 
 
If you want to learn more about Recorder, please do visit our website or email me at alex@recorder.tech. We’re also going to be demonstrating the product at BIBA on 15-16th May, so please come and see us there.