Welcome to mid-January, we are halfway through the first month of 2021 with a long weekend ahead to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Our updates this week include deals in distribution technology, a new insurtech stock offering and market updates. Here are the three things we learned this week:
- Insurance distribution technology continues to be hot area for technology solutions and disruption, American Family acquires Bold Penguin providing their agent force with a powerful commercial lines quote / bind capability that will offer products from a variety of carriers to augment their strong personal lines presence. In another combination, Applied Systems will purchase EZLynx to embed comparative rater technology into the widely-used agency management system offering a similar capability for agents.
- Lemonade announces a secondary stock offering to raise additional capital. The timing couldn’t be better with their stock price having sky-rocketed recently. It allows them to efficiently raise capital and buy time for their product and geographic expansion.
- Most of the COVID-19 business interruption court decisions have gone the way of insurers but the UK Supreme Court went the other way. This likely won’t affect the trends we’ve seen in the US. Commercial rates that have been rising are showing signs of moderating while underwriting discipline focuses on pandemic exclusion, civil unrest climate change and cyber risks.
Please continue to follow and give us feedback as to what we can do better with these updates. You may be hearing from us individually to connect virtually but if not please schedule with us. Stay safe and focused!