October 4, 2017 – Pie Insurance, a digitally-enabled direct distribution workers’ compensation insurance business, launches today at InsureTech Connect. The company’s initial offering is an interactive Price Predictor tool that allows SMBs improved insight into their workers’ compensation insurance rates. In 2018, Pie will begin offering its own A.M. Best “A” rated insurance policies. In the meantime, the tool is a tangible demonstration of Pie’s commitment to innovative and transparent insurance solutions for U.S. small business owners. The company’s analysis shows that 65% of small businesses overpay relative to their empirical risk level by an average of 29% for workers’ compensation insurance. And, the smaller the business, the more likely it is they are overpaying.
Pie boasts a leadership team of seasoned veterans from the insurance and technology sectors with more than 75 years of combined experience. The company’s co-founder and CEO is John Swigart, who was part of the executive team that led Esurance from start-up to $1.3 billion in premium and sale to Allstate for $1 billion in 2011.
The Pie Price Predictor tool is the first of its kind to be tailored for SMBs, assessing the range each business should be paying for insurance and the market average from a few user-submitted pieces of information. It leverages Pie’s proprietary pricing algorithms and is powered by Valen Analytics, an Insurity company. The tool draws on Valen’s InsureRight Platform® and its industry-leading data consortium with $59B of insurance premium and claims data.
Additionally, the Price Predictor tool shows the ease and simplicity Pie will bring to the commercial insurance market. By answering as few as 5 simple questions, small business owners nationwide receive a clear picture of how much they should be paying for workers’ compensation insurance based on their specific risk characteristics.
“The SMB market is often overcharged and underserved when it comes to meeting their commercial insurance needs,” said John Swigart, CEO of Pie. “The traditional high-touch approach agents and underwriters use in commercial lines leads to high prices and a protracted customer experience. Yet, the profitability in this sector indicates that small accounts are subsidizing larger accounts at most insurance companies. By focusing exclusively on small businesses with a digitally enabled solution, Pie will solve this problem at scale.”
Pie just closed its $4.3 million Seed Round of funding. Investors include Sirius Group, a global specialty insurer and reinsurer with $2.9 billion in capital and an A.M. Best “A” rating; Moxley Holdings, an early stage VC for data-enabled businesses and a founding investor in start-up unicorn Rubicon Global; and Elefund, the early stage VC with seed investments in FinTech businesses such as eShares and Robinhood, another start-up unicorn.
“We believe that Pie has an opportunity to become a meaningful player in the $100 billion small business commercial lines market by combining sophisticated data-driven pricing with relentless customer-centricity,” said Joel Moxley, General Partner with Moxley Holdings. “The company’s experienced leadership team is ideally positioned to leverage previous successes across a variety of insurance markets to build the company into a substantial player in a massive industry.”
The company is launching at InsureTech Connect, taking place in Las Vegas. For more information, visit www.insuretechconnect.com.
Pie Insurance aims to change the experience of purchasing workers’ compensation for SMB’s by increasing transparency and empowering businesses to make more informed buying decisions. Leveraging big data, the Pie Price Predictor tool easily shows how much a small business should be paying for workers’ compensation. Backed by Sirius, Moxley Holdings and Elefund, the company will begin offering its own insurance policies in 2018. For more information, visit www.pieinsurance.com.
Valen Analytics, an Insurity company, provides proprietary data, analytics and predictive modeling for property and casualty insurers. We work with insurers who are actively looking to utilize modern approaches to pricing, risk selection, claims triage, and premium fraud. Our customers are focused on increasing competitive pressures, fighting adverse selection with innovative solutions, and raising awareness for the impending “experience gap” with initiatives such as Insurance Careers Movement. Our customers span many lines of business including Homeowners, Personal Auto, Workers’ Compensation, Commercial Auto, Commercial Package, Commercial Property, and BOP. Learn more about Valen at www.valen.com.
Pie Insurance has flipped traditional business insurance on its head. Getting a workers’ compensation quote is now just 3 minutes away—and at a major savings. We’ve designed everything from quote to claim with small business owners in mind.
