How to Build a New Insurance Program

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New Product Development Guides

By The Boost Team on Aug 18, 2023

7 min read

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As the insurance landscape evolves, there are several approaches to consider for taking a new, innovative insurance program from idea to reality.

In this guide, we'll explore the three major avenues to creating a new insurance program: building it from scratch in-house, outsourcing to traditional partners, or partnering with an Insurance Infrastructure as a Service company like Boost.

Option 1: Build It Yourself

Building an insurance program from the ground up is a long, multifaceted undertaking that requires careful planning, meticulous attention to detail, and a robust set of resources.

The main benefit of this route is the control. When you build your own insurance product, you have complete control over the concept, design, operations, compliance, and tech, so you can approach each area in a way that centers your business needs.

Complexities of Building an Insurance Program

The downside of building an insurance program, however, is that you have complete control. In other words: you have complete responsibility for every aspect of this undertaking, several parts of which may be outside your core business and expertise.

Building an insurance program is a long and capital-intensive process, with heavy regulation adding considerable complexity. Here’s a brief, 10,000-ft view of the steps to getting your new insurance program off the ground:

1. Obtaining the Necessary Licenses

Your business is probably already licensed to sell insurance, but creating a new program in-house requires your company to also be licensed as a Managing General Agency (MGA). The requirements for this license vary by state, so you’ll need to research the process in each state you intend to sell in. Depending on whether you plan to build an admitted or non-admitted insurance product, you may also need to obtain a surplus lines license.

2. Developing Forms, Rates, and Guidelines

Creating the actual insurance product that your program will support involves crafting forms, establishing rates, and setting underwriting guidelines. Unless you already have people capable of those tasks within your business, you will need to hire experienced actuaries, underwriters, and insurance lawyers, which can be quite expensive.

3. Navigating State Regulations

A closely related factor to consider is that each state has its own unique insurance regulations. Forms, rates, underwriting guidelines, licensure, billing procedures, and more vary from state to state. Additionally, state regulations can frequently change, so you will need to stay up-to-date to ensure compliance. This process can be time-consuming and demands ongoing attention.

4. Garnering Carrier Buy-In and Capacity

Insurance capacity is vital for any insurance program. If you don’t have the capital to pay out policyholder claims, then you don’t have an insurance program. That being said, capital is not enough: by law, you will need to secure backing from one or more licensed insurance or reinsurance carriers. This step can take a long time to complete, especially if your business does not have existing carrier relationships.

5. Developing Distribution Technology

Creating or acquiring a Policy Administration System (PAS) can be one of the most expensive, and time consuming aspects of the process. The PAS is the technological backbone of the insurance program, and one of the most essential (and complex) pieces of the insurance tech stack. In order to deliver a modern, all-online insurance experience, you need a PAS that can support all operations related to an insurance policy.

Getting it right is complicated and very expensive, which is why few companies choose to build a bespoke PAS in-house. Most choose to work with an outside partner and purchase an existing PAS, though this comes with its own challenges (more on that in the next section). Either way, you have to do your research on which path would be best for your budget and your business.

6. Establishing Claims Administration

Legally, insurance claims must be administered by a licensed claims adjuster. This means that handling claims requires either hiring licensed adjusters in-house, or partnering with a Third Party Administrator (TPA) to administer them for you. You’ll also need to establish processes for how your customers file their claims, and how that information gets to the right person.

While building an insurance product in-house offers control and customization, it is an expensive, multi-year investment. In addition to the functional costs of building the product itself, you’ll need to recruit and hire internal experts to do the work on the program and manage it on an ongoing basis.

Option 2: Outsource to Traditional Partners

Most businesses that want to create a new insurance product don’t end up DIY’ing it, because, as we just explained, it is complicated, time-consuming, and very costly. Instead, many companies opt for a more cost-effective, less labor-intensive route, which is to outsource.

While we here at Boost are big supporters of outsourcing, the experience you have will really depend on who you outsource to and what they are capable of. There are a variety of traditional outsourcing partners that specialize in different parts of the insurance process - emphasis on parts of the process. You’ll need to work with different partners for different aspects of building a new program.

Actuarial Consultants

Actuarial consulting firms can help you with the creation of the product itself. This includes developing the forms, helping determine appropriate rates, and creating the underwriting guidelines. Some actuarial firms may also assist you with filing your product once it’s complete.

PAS Vendors

As mentioned in the previous section, you can outsource or purchase a Policy Administration System (PAS) through a PAS vendor. These third-party companies provide generic “off-the shelf” software designed so that any insurance company can buy it.

However, these systems usually aren’t usable straight off the shelf. In order for it to be able to support your insurance program, you will need to customize and configure it to support your business’s specific needs and workflows. Most vendors will do this work for you, for a substantial fee. There may also be ongoing licensing or platform costs required to use the software.

Additionally, system capabilities will vary from vendor to vendor, and not all PAS may be able to support every insurance operation. Depending on the level of sophistication your program requires, you will need to do some research on what off-the-shelf product would be the right fit.

Reinsurance Brokers

A reinsurance broker acts as an intermediary between you and reinsurance carriers. The broker’s primary role is to connect you with reinsurers who might be able to give you the capacity you need for your program. While these partners can be expensive to work with, they can be a big help in getting your program the necessary risk capital backing.

Third Party Administrators (TPA)

Third Party Administrators (TPA) are agencies that employ licensed claims adjusters, and manage various aspects of insurance policies, claims processing, and benefits administration. Generally speaking, working with a TPA is a cost-effective way to get licensed claims adjusters to handle your customers’ claims for you. They also operate as intermediaries between you and your policyholding customers. The downside of that however, is that the only touchpoint that your customers will have with their insurance company will be with the TPA and not with you. That means that you won’t have visibility into customer experience with this portion of your brand.

Disadvantage of Outsourcing to Traditional Partners

Outsourcing can be a quicker and more cost-effective solution than building from scratch, but that’s not to say that it is quick or inexpensive. The biggest disadvantage of this route is that since most traditional partners only cover a part of the insurance program development process, you will likely need multiple partners to create your program.

Each of these partners will provide their piece of the puzzle, but managing the process and making the pieces work together will be your problem. Not to mention, working with multiple vendors will likely add up in costs and time to market.

Option 3: Insurance Infrastructure as a Service

Unlike the traditional outsourcing partner companies, insurance infrastructure as a service (IIAAS) companies like Boost provide everything you need to start offering insurance to your customers. Think of us like a one-stop-shop for all of your insurance program development needs.

As a first-of-its-kind IIAAS partner, Boost has already gone through the build-a-program steps we looked at in the first section, and has put together the necessary infrastructure for every aspect of new insurance product development. In fact, we are the only outsourcing partner that assembles compliance, risk capital, and technology infrastructure under one roof.

An IIaaS partner like Boost handles every aspect of development in-house, including

Forms
Rating
Underwriting guidelines
Tech integration
Reinsurance
Filing

This is an important distinction because, in comparison with DIYing it or working with multiple traditional partners, working with an IIAAS partner will help you cut down expenses and minimize the effort of juggling multiple contracts and partnerships. You can leverage your partner’s existing expertise and infrastructure to get to market more quickly, with lower overall costs.

Whether you decide to build from scratch, partner with traditional partners, or embrace the innovative IIAAS approach, launching a new insurance program is an intricate journey with multiple avenues to explore.

If you want to learn more about partnering with Boost to build a custom insurance program, contact us.

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Ready for Liftoff: BHMS Backs Boost

Jul 31, 2024

Friends of Boost, Today Boost is thrilled to announce that we have secured a significant equity investment from BHMS Investments, setting the stage for an incredibly exciting next phase for this company and the amazing team that has built it brick-by-brick over the past seven years. With a rock-solid foundation firmly in place, this partnership is going to supercharge our growth, fuel more innovation, and cement Boost’s position as the go-to infrastructure platform in insurance. We are on a mission to empower MGAs, insurtechs, independent brokers and agents, wholesalers, embedded insurance providers, and really any company that just wants to build, transact, and operate more efficiently in this technology-enabled world of ours. While capital is great, today is about hard-earned validation for our team doing that the right way since Day 1. BHMS is the perfect capital partner for Boost in terms of their insurance expertise and unquestionable track record in the space, but more importantly, they are fantastic people that share both our views on the industry and our principles of company building. The market is dangerously fixed for early and growth stage companies right now (and I say “fixed” intentionally). It’s incredibly easy to get picked off in an environment like that, so it takes a rare mix of both intellect and character to do the right thing when you’re on the capital side of that equation - and even more to be truly value-add to your portfolio companies. BHMS has that mix in spades and appreciated Boost for what it is, what it has accomplished, and what remains an incredibly high ceiling for this company vs. playing short-term charades with the herd. That’s our kind of investor. This investment isn’t just about the money—it's a resounding endorsement of Boost’s strength, credibility, and potential to make a truly meaningful impact on the insurance industry at scale. With BHMS now on board, alongside an incredible group of long-time strategic backers like Markel, RenaissanceRe, and Canopius, we’re ready to take our game to the next level. Our mission has always been to disrupt the insurance space with cutting-edge tech and unparalleled service, and this backing proves that disrupting responsibly is the only approach that works in our industry. Anyone can grow fast if they don’t care about quality or long-term credibility. At Boost, we underwrite profitably, we respect compliance, and we always - always - take a collaborative approach with our stakeholders across the entire value chain. As someone with literally zero patience, I can personally attest to that being incredibly difficult to do at times - but it scales. Even with the market’s ups and downs, Boost has been a powerhouse of innovation in the insurtech landscape with equal commitment to disruption and reliability. Doing things the right way does not mean you cannot innovate - or even disrupt - and leveraging best-in-class technology is not a right reserved for #insurtechs. Our platform has always been a one-stop shop for insurtechs and embedded insurance providers and MGAs, independent agents and brokers, and wholesalers alike - offering everything from product development to underwriting and program management to claims administration and reinsurance capacity. With our proprietary tech and a dream team of industry pros, we’re delivering smarter, more efficient solutions than ever before. Since our first program launched in 2019, we’ve underwritten over $200 billion in coverage, which is a somewhat staggering figure in hindsight. Today we’re proud to support programs for giants like Amwins along with trailblazers like Cowbell, Newfront, and Wagmo, and we’re grateful for all of the companies that chose to build with Boost even when Boost itself was just getting started. Our steady, disciplined approach has kept our portfolio profitable and we like to think that has kept our partners in front of us very happy as well. All of Boost’s success is thanks to what is hands down the best team in the industry. Hard stop. Their grit, dedication, and willingness to tackle tough challenges head-on has been crucial. Boost’s commitment to quality starts with our team and is reflected in them every single day. We keep things lean at Boost because that quality always outperforms quantity. Even if that approach always requires more from each individual and makes the stakes a bit higher, working with the right people makes the returns on each long hour invested that much more gratifying. Few people exemplify those principles or have demonstrated such an unwavering commitment to Boost more than Jeremy Deitch, so I am also thrilled to announce that Jeremy has been promoted to President at Boost and will join me on our Board of Directors. Jeremy’s leadership has been critical since the day he started at Boost almost 6 years ago, following probably the most grueling interview process in our company’s history - one he is always happy to dramatize even more if you ever ask him. ;) I couldn’t be more grateful to have a partner like him as Boost soars to new heights. With this new investment, we’re geared up to boost (pun intended) our growth and expand our tech offerings. We’re planning to scale our MGA programs, roll out new products, and snap up some strategic acquisitions. Our goal? To make building a business in insurance easier, faster, and more efficient for everyone so they can better serve their customers. We’re more fired up than ever about our mission to empower insurance providers with the tech and infrastructure they need to thrive. This partnership with BHMS is just the beginning. The future is bright, and we’re ready to lead the charge. Thank you to everyone who has been part of our journey thus far. Let's all keep pushing boundaries together - because the best is yet to come. Special thanks to the team at Howden Capital Markets & Advisory for helping Boost always say what it’ll do and do what it says. You can find our full press release here and, more importantly, can start joining our platform here. All my best, Alex Maffeo CEO & Founder Boost Insurance

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What is a Cell Captive?

May 23, 2024

A captive is an insurance entity that a business creates, rents, or owns in order to self-insure risks. A cell captive, sometimes also called a protected cell captive or segregated cell captive, is a specific insurance captive structure that allows an entity to segment or separate business in one cell from that in another cell, so that a particular cell’s assets and liabilities are insulated from anything that happens in another cell (even if both cells are part of the same overall captive facility). Using captives to self-insure risk offers businesses a number of benefits: they can participate in some or all of their program’s underwriting profitability, maintain end-to-end control over risk (including pricing and claims handling), and avoid paying significant overhead fees to a “middleman” insurer. Companies have several options for structuring and utilizing an insurance captive. They might build a single-parent captive, pool risk in a group captive, or make use of a cell captive. In this blog, we’ll take a look at each. In a single-parent captive, a company will often partner with a fronting carrier to reinsure at least part of their own risk. These are most commonly used by very large companies with exposure to multiple lines of business, which they can insure through the same captive entity. Example: A national food-delivery business wants to provide insurance to its restaurant partners, to protect against the risk of lawsuits related to food safety for meals delivered through the service. It discusses partnerships with several major insurance carriers, but none are willing to provide the level of coverage that the business is looking for at a reasonable price. To get what it needs, the food-delivery business sets up a captive to reinsure a fronting carrier partner, enabling the business to insure its own risk and provide the coverage it needs to its restaurant partners. Setting up a single-parent captive is a considerable undertaking with high capital requirements and a complex setup, with significant ongoing operational requirements going forward. In order to make sense financially, it usually requires a high volume of premium. For that reason, this option is usually only viable for very large businesses. For businesses that can’t afford (either in time or in money) to set up their own captive, a second option is to partner with other businesses in a related industry to set up a group captive. In this scenario, a single captive maintains portfolio capacity that can be shared by a group of entities. The entities can then pool risk together in the single captive. Example: Several real estate companies form a partnership to share a group captive to pool their similar risks. Each company contributes a certain amount of capital to fund the captive, and the capacity is shared among the partners. The participating real estate firms are then able to leverage the captive’s capacity to exercise greater control over their risk, and avoid paying high fees to middlemen. This can allow the partner businesses to share risk (and benefits) between them, and works well for trade associations and other groups of companies in related industries, that share similar risks. However, since the fund is shared between partners as well, one partner’s negative returns can impact the other partners involved. In a cell captive, the business first sets up an entity called a core, which is a similar process to setting up a single-parent captive. Once the core entity is complete, however, the business can much more easily spin up additional cells within the captive structure. The financials for those individual cells are separate from each other, rather than the combined funding of a single-parent or group captive. For many companies, however, using a cell captive doesn’t mean building one themselves. While there are use cases for single-parent cell captives, most businesses that create them then rent out cells to other businesses. Using a cell in another company’s captive entity (also called captive-as-a-service) allows a business to reap the benefits of an insurance captive at a much lower cost. We’ll look at some examples in the next section. The first step in creating a cell captive is to create the “Core” entity. This process is similar to building a single-parent captive: Once the core captive entity has been created and adequately funded, the owner can spin up individual cells within the captive’s structure to support different lines of business, segments, or partners. The Department of Insurance will still need to approve all new cells, but the process is much more streamlined than in prior cases. New cells can often be set up in weeks instead of the months or years typically needed for entirely new captive entities. Captive cells’ assets and liabilities are then statutorily protected from each other (which is where the ‘protected cell captive’ name comes from). This means that if one cell has a difficult year and experiences significant underwriting loss, the assets of the neighboring cells can’t be used to fund that loss. There are multiple ways that cell captives are used, including offering captive-as-a-service (also called rent-a-captive) to other partners or businesses, and separating different parts of the parent company’s business for performance tracking. In a captive-as-a-service or rent-a-captive scenario, the company that owns the captive core would allow other businesses to use cells in its captive. For a fee, the owner can set up a new cell specifically for the partner business, and manage it on their behalf. This lets the partner business leverage the owner’s infrastructure to achieve many of the same benefits of a single-parent captive, without the cost and complexity of creating one. Example: An insurtech specializing in commercial insurance has built a very strong customer base, and wants to further grow its business by participating in some of its own risk. However, building a full captive is too resource-intensive for the insurtech to take on. Instead, the insurtech partners with a CaaS provider and rents a captive cell. The insurtech then uses the cell to self-insure some of its risks, enabling it to participate in the underwriting returns and further scale towards a full-stack insurance business. While the most common reason for building a cell captive is to rent out cells to other businesses, there are a few reasons a company might build one for its own use. Because the cells’ financials are statutorily separated from each other, a cell captive allows a large enterprise to delineate between different lines of business or geographic regions, and monitor their performance separately. Example: A nationwide property management company offers several insurance products to its customers to help protect their personal property and finances. For planning and budgeting purposes, each line is supported by an individual cell in the management company’s cell captive. Over the course of the fiscal year, several lines perform over their targets, while one line significantly underperforms. The other LOBs’ budgets are unaffected by the low-performing LOB’s losses, and the company has clear visibility into which of its products are doing well and which may need a course correction. Cell captives provide a number of benefits to both their owners and the end users: Cell captives are popular for a reason: they offer significant value to both the companies with the resources to build them, and the companies that would rather rent a cell than build a single-parent entity from scratch. To learn more about Captive-as-a-Service with Boost, contact us.

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Partnerships and Focus: Big Trends at Money20/20

Nov 3, 2021

It was a busy October for the team at Boost Insurance, wrapping up with one of our favorite industry events: Money20/20. The conference was a super interesting contrast to ITC which was laser-focused on insurance, while Money 20/20 was more about fintech in general and much, much bigger! With fintech about ten years ahead of insurtech in terms of maturity, it’s interesting to see the level of innovation and diversity of companies in our big brother industry. Here are some of the big trends we noticed. One of the really interesting trends that kept being repeated at Money20/20 was a shift in mindset among both fintechs and banks. In the past, they have tended to see each other as competition for consumers’ business and attention but now everyone is moving towards viewing each other as complementary vs. competitive. We saw multiple collaborative efforts between the upstarts and the established, working together to create a better customer experience. This works because they each have a specialization (fintechs excel at meeting modern consumer expectations and banks are experts in profitably navigating a very regulated, very complex business), and partnership lets them bring both those strengths to the table. This was extra interesting to us at Boost because it reflects what we see in insurance, with insurtechs and carriers working together and bringing their own strengths together to meet modern consumer needs and expectations. For example - Boost has built a modern tech platform making various insurance products available via API but partners with established reinsurance companies to facilitate risk transfer. There will still be winners and losers between the incumbents and the upstarts, but as collaboration and competition continue consumers will be the clear winners. A trend I’ve written about before, and one that we continue to see play out, is tech companies’ focus on affinity groups. Fintechs are springing up all over with explicit goals of serving a relatively narrow group of people and serving them well. Companies like Paceline for people focused on health and wellness, Daylight for the LGBTQ+ community, and First Boulevard for African-Americans are just some of the fintechs concentrating on being the best option for a specific set of consumers. This is pretty much the opposite of traditional one-size-fits-all programs - instead of creating something broad that can be good enough for the biggest slice of people, creating something very targeted that can be great for a specific niche. This trend is great news for consumers who traditionally have not been served well by financial services in general. At Boost we’re starting to work with more affinity-focused companies because our modular, customizable product structure allows partners to tailor insurance for their customer needs. It’s exciting to be part of making insurance more accessible to all groups of people! Finally, it was really exciting and validating to see so much interest in new approaches to traditional industries. Finance and insurance have historically had a reputation for being very slow to change, sometimes for good reason (highly regulated, handling people’s money is a big responsibility, etc). This year though there’s a ton of interest in potential innovations, look no further than the enormous presence of blockchain and crypto-focused companies at Money20/20! Boost met with a TON of different companies during the show, and we cannot talk about anything yet but be on the lookout for some very interesting things coming in the near future! Money2020 was a heck of a conference and while my conference year is wrapped, the Boost team will be out and about at shows the rest of the year. We are looking forward to more opportunities to meet people in 2022, so if you did not get a chance to connect with us at Money2020, just drop us a line.