Insurtechs that enable rather than disrupt see greater success: Indio CEO

Insurance technology companies are divided into two camps - the disruptors and the enablers, according to Mike Furlong, CEO of Indio Technologies, a US-based start-up that has set out to streamline and modernise the commercial insurance application and renewal process.

The San Francisco-based company recently raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from 8VC. The start-up targets insurance agencies and brokers with a white-label platform designed to digitise paper-based processes to make it easier to collaborate with underwriters and receive quotes faster.

According to Furlong, while disruptors are out to disrupt or replace traditional players in insurance, creating fierce competition in an already challenging market, enablers are emerging as more evolutionary than revolutionary as they are trying to enable the agencies and brokers to overcome technology roadblocks and elevate offerings by working in partnership with them and not against them.

"Insurtechs that are disruptors are trying to completely replace someone in the value chain whether it's a carrier or broker, and then there are enablers that are trying to improve the existing system," Furlong said. "In my opinion a lot of the success so far has come much more on the enabler's side."

He added: "Although disruptors have been valuable because they scare the agencies and carriers to adopt the technology faster, they are anxious about technology replacing what they are doing."

However, it's worth noting that adopting new technology and implementing change is a huge challenge for the bigger players in the ecosystem as they deal with bulky legacy systems and a vast amount of data trapped in unstructured files and documents.

"Commercial insurance has always been the most data-intensive industry. But the volume and variety of data agencies and brokers, working as intermediaries in all the transactions, they are encumbered with is incredible.

"Adopting new technology is really difficult for them because to do something more revolutionary you have to access and be able to work with their existing data that is locked up in their management system or elsewhere," Furlong explained.

"The main challenge for insurance agencies and brokers is that they have all this legacy data that is completely unstructured. It is difficult to do things with that," he said.

Indio, which launched in 2016, claims to offer a "modern, simplified insurance experience" to insurance agents and brokers by connecting and automating their entire business insurance transactions on one platform. With additional funds for expansion, and the recent hiring of senior executives from Google and Microsoft, the company is now looking to explore partnerships in the P&C industry, as well as moving into overseas markets.

Indio is also planning to bolster its workforce in the product and engineering, and sales and marketing side, while continuing to build its suite of web-based solutions to "create a paperless insurance industry".