Some days ago, CoverForce, a NYC-based independent insurance platform, emerged from stealth mode raising $5m in seed funding. In conjunction with the announcement, Cyrus Karai, CEO, answered our questions about the company, the funding and future plans.
FinSMEs: Hi Cyrus, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What’s your background?
Of course, I’m Cyrus Karai – current CEO and one of three co-founders at CoverForce, the first independent insurance platform bringing streamlined comparisons and one-click buying to commercial insurance. Before co-founding CoverForce, I began my career in the financial services department of PWC. Originally from Australia, I came to America to study at the University of Pennsylvania, where my team and I received support from faculty and reached out to opinion leaders to better understand how we can help agents and carriers, and build a business focused on public benefit.
This outreach brought me into contact with one of CoverForce’s other co-founders, Behram Dinshaw, who I met in 2020 after several senior people at different top insurance carriers recommended that I reach out to him due to his thought-leadership on the benefits of API development for insurance carriers. Behram previously operated at Travelers in commercial lines (as EVP of Small & Middle Market Centers), as well as in personal lines (as the COO of Personal Lines), which gave him a truly unique perspective on the different market dynamics and have propelled our work at CoverForce forward. In addition to the role of co-founder, he currently serves as Chairperson of the Board at CoverForce.
The last co-founder to complete the CoverForce founder trio is Kaivan Wadia. We have known each other for many years, and as Chief Technology Officer he brings extensive experience from his time as an Engineer and Manager at Amazon Business.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about CoverForce. What is the market problem you want to solve? What is the real opportunity?
Historically, the commercial insurance industry has been fragmented and lacking standardized experiences, forcing companies (agencies and business owners) in need of insurance quotes to navigate a complex, time-consuming process that consists of back and forth emails and phone calls – a process that can take multiple days or longer. CoverForce is looking to bring speed and simplicity to a market where speed is increasingly becoming a competitive factor for both carriers and agents. CoverForce does so through an easy-to-integrate API and a team of experienced engineers with insurance knowledge, who build customized solutions in lockstep with the enterprise customers we serve.
The real opportunity is helping top insurance carriers become more digitally accessible to their appointed agents and end-consumers, while unlocking access to new alternative distribution channels.
FinSMEs: What are the features differentiating the product from competitors?
Differing from our competitors, CoverForce is the first independent API for commercial insurance – meaning that CoverForce does not hold agency or broker licenses, thereby ensuring no conflict of interest.
Our mission is to strengthen independent agents, not disintermediate them. We build infrastructure that provides streamlined API access to the leading commercial insurance carriers for instant quote and one-click bind, while bringing standardization to the entire industry – where carrier APIs are disparate for SME commercial products like workers compensation, business owners policy (BOP), general liability and cyber.
CoverForce’s API is easy to integrate – cutting the time to integrate with a leading carrier from months to weeks. It also helps carriers and their preferred distribution partners – appointed agencies and software applications – to build solutions faster, as it can embed onto any software application and website for easy-to-use commercial shipping experiences for agencies and business owners.
We also build customized solutions, co-developed with carriers, to cater to the needs of large networks and wholesaler groups, which are built to high system and data security standards, to ensure carrier quote & bind APIs are only accessible with carrier consent. This customer-centric approach has allowed CoverForce to power the second largest network of independent agencies – ISU Insurance Agency Network.
CoverForce was co-founded by myself, senior insurance executive Behram Dinshaw (former EVP of Small & Middle Market Centers at Travelers) and former Amazon engineer and manager, Kaivan Wadia. Together, we’ve established an expert leadership team that brings extensive tech experience and deep insurance knowledge together with industry experts from Google, The Hartford, Travelers, Allstate Corporation, McKinsey & Company and more to build technology that seamlessly integrates into established processes of carriers, agents and wholesalers.
FinSMEs: You just raised a new funding round. Please, tell us more about it.
Our funding took place in 2022 which saw $5M from investors that include Nyca Partners, QED Investors, Muir Capital, Sidekick Partners and Moving Capital. We chose our investors based on their passion for the insurance space and commitment to building meaningful infrastructure that would help existing participants to connect digitally. Since then, we’ve been heads down building technology that seamlessly integrates into established processes of carriers, agents and wholesalers.
FinSMEs: Can you share some numbers and achievements of the business?
CoverForce officially began on-boarding users in May 2023 and since then, we’ve welcomed more than 3,500 users across the country to our platform. Users include the second largest independent agency network, ISU Insurance Agency Network.
As noted, comparison shopping for commercial insurance used to take multiple days. We’ve simplified that process, giving agents and their business customers proposals from all of the leading carriers in the market – helping carriers to bring awareness to their market appetite, so they can drive increased volumes. With CoverForce, an agent or business owner can submit one application and get bindable quotes (not indications) with eight of the top carriers in under 10 minutes. The current process would have taken an agent days to engage with all eight carriers to deliver bindable proposals. This is important in the US, where business owners expect the same instant coverage and streamlined experience for business insurance, which they already receive in personal lines.
FinSMEs: What are your medium-term plans?
In the next six months, we plan to achieve:
- A continuation of the momentous growth we’ve seen onboarding users in 2023.
- The continued development of our close partnerships with top tier insurance carriers – with a focus on expanding the products they offer digitally to their appointed agents and distribution partners.
- We are working with a number of carriers to deliver market-leading digital experiences to their appointed agencies, including non-P&C products that have never before been digitally accessible to agents from top tier carriers.
- Developing new carrier and agency relationships, as we offer greater optionality to both market participants, whilst helping increase volumes.
- Growth of our Engineer and Customer Success teams, to make sure we build faster and our growing user base is supported.
- A potential Series A funding round.
FinSMEs
06/11/2023