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INDUSTRY INSIGHTS·Jatin Sandilya

Speed is the ultimate edge in E&S

In excess and surplus lines the first submission in the door blocks the rest, however well prepared they are. After quoting around $300k in premium, here is what that taught us, and what we built because of it.

Jatin Sandilya · Founder

You run an insurance agency.

A lead comes in for home insurance in California, in a high-risk wildfire zone. They are urgently looking for insurance since they were recently dropped by their carrier, and they are distressed as a result.

You, as the broker, reassure them of great service and tell them you'd be able to find a replacement policy quickly.

The submission process makes you fill out ACORDs and supplementals for multiple carriers that you quote with the wholesalers you are appointed with.

By the time your submission reaches a carrier you are already market blocked by another broker. You took three days to get to it; they were faster and submitted in a few minutes.

You are not fast enough and unable to beat the competition because you were doing things the old way, or using a rater that doesn't actually work for the most part.

We've lived through the pain of losing business like this ourselves, and we've heard this complaint time and again from the brokers we've worked with over the past few months. Market blocking allows a less prepared submission that arrives first to block a much more prepared one a week down the road.

Speed is of the essence

After quoting around $300k in premium in the last few months at Latent Insurance, one thing has stood out clearly in running an insurance brokerage: speed is of ultimate essence in winning business.

Naturally, being an AI-native insurance brokerage, we built in a lot of AI goodness to help us close faster, including our own Agency Management System (AMS) and an email agent to help us handle the back and forth between insureds and underwriters. That agent evolved into something bigger.

How an E&S broker routes an address to a quote today: admitted carriers through ten or more portals, or ACORDs and supplementals emailed to a wholesaler with up to a week of turnaround.
How an E&S broker routes an address to a quote today.

Meet Gemma

Meet Gemma, a 24/7 chief of staff for your insurance agency that helps you stay focused on the core work of advisory while Gemma handles the busy work for you.

The same flow with Gemma: intake and enrichment up front, instant quotes by email, and ACORDs, supplementals and follow-ups handled for same-day submission.
The same route with Gemma working the submission.

With Gemma, the grunt work is already handled for you. It auto-enriches information on the insured, auto-generates ACORDs of the right types, follows up when the insured hasn't provided new information, or even connects directly to commercial carriers to get you a quote back in five minutes.

Gemma is early, but forward-thinking brokerages are already set up, and more are interested in adopting the placement system.

If you are looking to transform your insurance agency with AI, book a call to learn more about how we could add the same magic we're experiencing to your insurance operations.

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