INSURANCE TECHNOLOGY
TRICHOME | June 06, 2022
Attender Underwriting Managers dba TRICHOME, a managing general agency, with the only cannabis dispensary insurance product endorsed by the National Cannabis Risk Management Association, today announced new initiatives designed to improve its ability to offer its unique products to a cannabis marketplace in need of broader solutions.
Jeffrey C. Conway will assume the combined role of CEO and President of TRICHOME. Conway is currently the CEO and a founding member the company with over 30 years of underwriting, reinsurance, wholesale, program, and captive management experience. He replaces Rocco Petrilli who served in a role as interim president before accepting the role of CEO and president of National Cannabis Risk Prevention Services (NCRPS). Conway is joined by Thomas Cioletti, who was recently promoted to Vice President of Underwriting and Operations. Together they lead a team that builds, underwrites, launches, and manages property and casualty insurance coverages focused solely on cannabis.
TRICHOME has upgraded its dispensary offering to "A" rated paper and continues to make improvements to its easy-to-use agent platform and extremely user-friendly application process. TRICHOME features extensive risk management and loss control, broad coverage enhancements, a proprietary property rating systems that rates perils from a single point geographic location, and a pseudo-Insurtech approach to dispensaries, which enables their team to turn quotations around within 24 hours.
"We are wildly excited about the future and extremely thankful to Rocco Petrilli for his leadership and brilliant approach to truly risk management-based insurance products", stated Conway. "We will continue the vision to build and offer risk management and insurance that promotes the long term sustainability needed in the cannabis marketplace."
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INSURANCE TECHNOLOGY
Socotra | May 21, 2022
Socotra, the partner of choice for innovative insurers, today announced the acquisition of Avolanta, a software startup offering the only unified portal purpose-built for the insurance industry. As part of the acquisition, the Avolanta team will join Socotra and Avolanta’s technology will become Socotra Unified Portal.
Insurance companies are struggling to deliver the types of digital user experiences that are now common in other industries. Many insurance customers are still forced to fill out paper applications with agents and brokers manually entering customer data into outdated web portals. Avolanta enables insurers to solve these issues by seamlessly connecting agents, brokers, and customers with its unified portal.
Avolanta provides the only unified portal purpose-built for insurance
Avolanta was founded in 2018 by insurtech entrepreneur, Chuck Wilson, and insurance veteran, Gavin Dean. With decades of experience in the industry, the founders created Avolanta to provide insurers a better way to streamline processes and create user experiences.
The cloud-native platform allows insurers to rapidly innovate and deploy new products with a unified portal. Agents can collaborate with customers through secure, shared online applications to reduce manual entry. As a result, insurers can deliver customized experiences, automate data capture and analytics, and ultimately drive more conversions and revenue.
Joining Socotra is an exciting next chapter for Avolanta, Avolanta’s frontend technology focused on the user experience is the perfect extension to Socotra’s backend policy core. The combined platform will help insurers quickly develop new insurance products with more convenient buying experiences for any distribution channel—whether it’s agent, embedded, or direct-to-consumer. We can’t wait to see how insurers will leverage Socotra to innovate.”
Chuck Wilson, CEO and co-founder of Avolanta.
The acquisition of Avolanta is a perfect complement to Socotra’s industry-leading policy core, Socotra and Avolanta share a mission to modernize the insurance industry with open APIs, true cloud, and off-the-shelf capabilities that accelerate innovation and speed-to-market. Together, we now offer the complete front-to-back platform that moves the insurance industry forward.”
Dan Woods, founder and CEO of Socotra.
About Socotra
Socotra is bringing unparalleled speed and ease to insurance technology. With Socotra’s modern core platform, global insurers and insurtech MGAs can accelerate product development, reduce maintenance costs, and improve customer experiences. Socotra provides open APIs, a product-agnostic data model, and out-of-the-box capabilities to manage the entire policy lifecycle, making insurance innovation faster, easier, and more affordable.
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HEALTH INSURANCE
HealthSmart | June 02, 2022
HealthSmart, one of the nation's largest third party administrators of health plans for employers and plan sponsors, announced the launch of Houston SmartCare™, a comprehensive level-funded health plan that offers market leading discounts to Houston-area small to mid-sized employers. The plan offers significant savings and protection for plan sponsors and features access to leading hospitals, facilities and providers in Greater Houston through Employers Health Network (EHN).
Houston SmartCare delivers a transparent, all-inclusive model that offers predictable costs through a level-funded plan with no additional risk for employers and significantly lower premiums than mainstream fully-insured programs. The program also offers financial security with stop loss coverage to protect plans from catastrophic claims.
In addition to a comprehensive health benefits plan, Houston SmartCare boasts a superior member experience through its Concierge Advisor Team who works to guide members and help them navigate their healthcare journey every step of the way.
This new health plan designed especially for the Greater Houston area is another example of how HealthSmart approaches our organizational mission of reducing costs for plan sponsors and delivering premium healthcare solutions to our members, This program demonstrates an innovative approach to help plan sponsors in the Houston area control their health benefit costs by providing deeply discounted access to the area's top hospitals and providers through EHN. This is big news for small and medium employer groups and Houston SmartCare is truly a game-changer for our broker community in terms of providing quality healthcare options with deep discounts."
Craig Julien, CEO for HealthSmart.
Plan sponsors typically must work with several players to build their health plans, By bringing together experts in the areas of most concern to small and mid-sized plan sponsors, we have created a one-stop solution that offers a top-quality, focused provider network, critical stop loss coverage, and comprehensive third-party administration services, relieving area health plan sponsors of the burden of shopping for these services individually."
Omar Haedo, president of Elan Insurance Group
About HealthSmart
HealthSmart is one of the largest third party administrators in the country and the premier provider of innovative, customizable and scalable healthcare solutions for employers, brokers and payers. We partner with plan sponsors to provide key services needed to reduce healthcare costs and manage members with dignity and respect. HealthSmart is the one-stop source for health plan needs, including health plan benefit administration, pharmacy benefit management, care management and wellness programs and provider networks.
About EHN
Employers Health Network (EHN) embraces a high-performance network model that helps employers provide exceptional quality healthcare benefits at lower cost. Our unique network model helps both employers and members save immediately and save over time through a sustainable model with our high-quality and accountable network partners.
About Elan Insurance Group
ELAN Insurance Group is a group of companies headquartered in Miami collaborating to bring competitive, cutting-edge health insurance products to the marketplace. From traditional comprehensive plans to self-funded plans, ELAN tailors its offering to meet the needs of employers and individuals across the Caribbean and the United States.
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AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE
Buckle | August 02, 2022
Buckle, the financial services company providing auto insurance solutions for the gig economy, has received two awards in the 2022 FinTech Awards by Wealth & Finance International magazine.
Buckle was named Best Rideshare & Delivery Driver Insurance Specialists 2022, as well as Most Innovative Rideshare Auto Insurance Product Provider in North America.
“We’re so pleased to be recognized for our unique gig insurance and our deep commitment to the success of rideshare and delivery drivers. As both insurance and gig economy experts, our goal at Buckle is to advocate for our members and offer them access to products and services that simply aren’t available anywhere else. These awards reinforce our success in meeting those aspirations,” says Marty Young, Chief Executive Officer of Buckle.
“We’re so pleased to be recognized for our unique gig insurance and our deep commitment to the success of rideshare and delivery drivers. As both insurance and gig economy experts, our goal at Buckle is to advocate for our members and offer them access to products and services that simply aren’t available anywhere else. These awards reinforce our success in meeting those aspirations,” says Marty Young, Chief Executive Officer of Buckle.
Now in its sixth year, Wealth & Finance International magazine’s FinTech Awards recognize the firms that are redefining finance and banking for the modern age, and for the ever-changing modern consumer.
About Buckle
Buckle is the digital financial services company providing insurance for the gig industry. Serving the vital, rising middle class, Buckle protects drivers across personal, rideshare, and delivery driving for leading companies including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Gopuff, Instacart, Amazon Flex, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Favor, Shipt, and more. The company also offers insurance solutions for select partners. Buckle has received awards for 2022 including Best of Insurance, Best Rideshare & Delivery Driver Insurance Specialists, a Fastest Growing Company, Most Innovative Driveshare Driver Insurance Provider, Best Tech Startup, an InsurTech 50, and more. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and www.buckleup.com.
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