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Hello Friends! Another week with plenty of news some outside of insurance. A slowdown in earnings has us focusing on other items including a Labor Market Study, profile of startup Informed and distribution news. Here are the three things we learned: |
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Q1 2023 Insurance Labor Market Study Jacobson Group and Aon (formerly Ward Group) published an Insurance Labor Market Study. Among many findings published in the work and accompanying webinar were that MGAs are gaining the share of talent over Carriers. This would correspond to the trend we are seeing of the MGA market being a growing segment of the insurance industry. The results we are seeing from a carrier perspective are tough, as explained in this 2022 Year In Review. MGAs do not have the headwinds of the hard market and there are many innovative startups with embedded and other innovative distribution options as well as established MGAs attracting UW talent. Then of course you have the bigger operations still in the market to buy smaller ones with retiring principals. |
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Informed Profile Friend of Wikifri, Ian, has launched an innovative startup called Informed. Check out this nice profile provided by Carrier Management. Informed’s mission is to make insurance industry better by helping consumers understand the policies and coverages. They can be the Consumer Reports, testing policies like testing laptops to give consumers unbiased information to inform their decisions. In the profile they make analogies to NerdWallet and Credit Karma, two websites that provide advice about financial products. This will be an interesting startup to watch as they focus on building a business and not rushing to get the highest valuation possible. |
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Distribution Launch and Acquisition Distribution continues to be an area ripe for innovation and there was news of an acquisition this week with digital marketplace Insurify acquiring longtime insurance comparison site Compare.com. The two hope to join forces to grow and become profitable and there is hope this will generate more traffic and bindable business for the carrier panels they represent as digital natives look to buy insurance. In other news, VIU by HUB is launching a digital insurance marketplace for Arizona State University Alumni. This looks to be a good affinity channel to offer insurance and other financial services products. ASU says they went through a process to find the right partner for this opportunity. They have motive to engage their large alumni base with valuable benefits. |
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