I’m excited to share insights from a recent webinar I did with Coterie Insurance VP of Insurance Pete Buccola and Coterie Insurance VP of Product Ray Lynch. From personalization to data to the risk of speed, we had an awesome conversation covering many Commercial Lines topics.

“Insurance is not always something people shop for on the weekends, but they know at certain times in their personal or business lives that they need to procure it. And they want to do that in a seamless way.”

Ray Lynch, VP of Product, Coterie Insurance

Personalizing the Experience

One of the challenges or opportunities in the Commercial Lines space is figuring out how to provide the personalized experience consumers expect when making everyday purchases – including insurance.

“We're looking at the whole commercial insurance value chain to have the biggest impact,” Pete said. “We are looking at using data to have that sort of personalization and essentially speed up and simplify how small business owners procure insurance.”

From online shopping to doctor appointments, we all experience daily transactions that are quick, seamless and personalized to us. That is what we’re going for when it comes to Commercial Lines.

“If they [consumers] log on to Amazon today, they know everything about what they bought. We're trying to take that similar buying experience for commercial insurance.”

Pete Buccola, VP of Insurance, Coterie Insurance

Digging Into Data and Streamlining Questions

When it comes to personalization, data is critical. Coterie accesses available data to help make the best decisions for their business.

“We have to make decisions off the data. We answer our underwriting questions with that data, and our ability to do that allows us to put insurance in places that business owners want them to be,” Pete said.

Everyone has a different way of asking questions. How does Coterie do this?

“What attracted me to Coterie is the idea of really keying in on the valuable pieces of information that we know will impact these small commercial businesses, whether it’s from a pricing or risk tolerance standpoint,” Ray said.

Balancing Speed with Service

Slimming down question sets and streamlining processes speeds things up. But is speed ever a problem? Some love to move fast, and some want to slow it down. Pete and Ray shared their thoughts on how they find the right balance or speed with service.

“We’re taking risks commensurate with the data we have and trying to keep some balance there because we want to be around. We’re risk managers,” Pete said.

Ray added that it’s important to apply speed appropriately where it belongs and slow down when needed to make sure customers understand what they’re getting.

"Don’t be the quote generator but be the risk manager they’re looking for you to be," he said.

More Commercial Lines Coterie Talk

Want to hear more? We’ve only covered a small portion of the topics we covered in the webinar. Listen to the entire conversation in our on-demand webinar.