PolicyFly is an AI-powered PAS (policy admin system) for specialty insurers. Capable of capturing submissions from any source, underwriting complex scenarios and automating the full policy lifecycle, PolicyFly seeks to bring ease of doing business and efficient growth to specialty programs. Andrew Daniels sat with CEO, Cory Crosland, to learn more about how PolicyFly is impacting the industry.
What is PolicyFly’s client focus?
“We work exclusively with specialty and E&S insurers. Essentially, it’s anyone who either has the pen and/or issues and manages policies and documentation. Our customers are MGAs/MGUs, carriers, brokers, coverholders and syndicates, writing risks worldwide.”
What does your product do?
“PolicyFly empowers insurers to handle every submission – from email to renewals. We transform the process of reviewing, underwriting, issuing and managing risks so that insurers can scale and dramatically improve their turnaround times. We can do this through six key areas.
The first is what we call ‘Capture’, and this allows PolicyFly to digitize every submission from any source, whether that’s email, API, agent-first portals, etc. and deliver a best-in-class experience for distribution partners. The next is called ‘Underwrite’, which combines real-time data with flexible controls to underwrite every submission. With ‘Manage’ we focus on our ability to process complex endorsements and mid-term adjustments, including out-of-sequence endorsements.
Our ability to ‘Automate’ allows underwriters the flexibility to use straight-through-process applications based on configurable business rules. Then with ‘Measure’ we can report across submission queues, aggregate limits and frame the health of the program. Lastly, ‘Integrate’ leverages third-party data to inform decision-making or to share your data with other business systems like accounting and claims.”
How much capital have you raised?
“We raised a $7M seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures with support from YCombinator, Viewpoint, Susa Ventures and our amazing angels.”
Was the company born from within or outside the industry?
“Before starting PolicyFly, I started a digital product studio where we serviced many different customers and clients building web and mobile apps. We started working with different insurance companies who were looking for ways to connect with their distribution partners and improve back office efficiency.
We ended up building three different PAS (policy admin systems) platforms from scratch for various insurance products, and we became obsessed with the challenges and opportunities that are so unique in this industry.
So when the fourth insurer saw what we were doing and wanted their own system, we realized that this was an opportunity to take a step back and drive our vision of the future of specialty forward by creating our own platform that could power these types of products.“
What growth metrics have you accomplished over the last 12 months?
“We just passed processing over $1B in specialty premium!”
Within your domain, what is the current challenge that the industry is facing?
“The biggest challenge we see comes down to data and workflow. While there's an abundance of data, much of it is unstructured and not very useful. If you're an underwriter, you may have more submissions than you can get to. How do you triage those? How do you set it up so that some of the risks automatically get processed and quoted? How do you know how your book is performing? How do you know what you're writing or not writing? How do you use real-time claims data to influence your decision-making in the future?
Another major issue is manual processing throughout the submission-to-policy lifecycle, which takes weeks and distracts underwriters from focusing on growth. Legacy technology adds to the complexity, making integrations with companies and third-party data providers a hassle, regardless of insurer size.
Finally, the sheer volume of submissions, whether via email, portals, or APIs, makes it difficult to streamline processes. Combining data and legacy tech constraints only compounds the challenge.
To address these challenges in specialty, this typically means you have multiple systems to do this properly (ingestion, prep, workbench, issuance, admin, etc), and for some risks, you still need to process the risk manually (or off platform) because of the complexity. This is because so many solutions in the market are ‘one size fits all’ and cannot be cost effectively configured to accept more complex insurance products or integrated with others.”
How does PolicyFly take a unique approach to providing value?
“When we think about how we provide value, we want to partner with underwriters that are struggling with too many submissions, have ambitious growth goals or could improve their underwriting performance with better data.
That means that instead of processing inbound submissions over email and chasing missing data, you are working on a complete platform that can handle a submission from email through issuance, endorsements and renewals. This brings the biggest impact at the end of the day.
Something like 60 percent of an underwriter's time is spent on non-underwriting or growth activities. We want to bring that number to zero. So, our approach to providing value is ultimately measured in the growth we bring to our customers’ products along with the back office efficiency improvements. We know we are providing value when PolicyFly is being used to handle every submission.”
What inspired the team to start this company?
“Well, you know, most people hear 'insurance' and think, 'Well, that's a snooze fest' right? But for us, it was quite the opposite. We fell in love with the combination of the absolutely incredible people we got to meet and the complex, deep challenges they face every day.
The history behind insurance is fascinating too. We have customers who are celebrating their 200th anniversary, and I just don't think there are many other industries that can say that. It's amazing to think about how insurance is the backbone of our economy and how it minimizes suffering and supports people when they need it most.
Given our prior experience building solutions, we noticed similar challenges across insurers: lots of rekeying, many manual processes taking up valuable time, no easy way to integrate data with other systems (either in-house or external), and no straightforward way to report on business metrics like aggregates, hit/loss rates and so on.
For us, the inspiration really came from these complex challenges and the massive impact we knew we could have on these incredible people and their businesses. This is what fires us up every day, and it's what you'll feel if you connect with us!”
Can you share any goals for the next 12 months?
“We are actively interested in partnering with more insurers to launch more specialty products and reinvesting everything we have in improving the product.”
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