Insurance Agent News: Diversity, Investors back Startups, and Email Addresses for Business Development

Taking Bigger, Broader Steps Toward Diversity

Beyond diversifying their advertising, some say that companies can do far more than they previously have to fight discrimination and support social justice. Carriers including State Farm, Chubb, AIG and Root state that they are either already taking or preparing to take those broader steps.

Derede McAlpin of LEVICK, a crisis management public relations firm, explains that the Black Lives Matter global protests and their aftermath have raised the bar in terms of how companies should respond to calls for more diversity.

“In the wake worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, corporations rushed to issue statements denouncing discrimination, racial inequities and social injustice. However, more often than not, even the most well intended support triggered backlash accusing the same companies of hypocrisy,” said McAlpin, a crisis management expert who serves as chair of LEVICK’s litigation and diversity & inclusion practice groups. “From racial discrimination and toxic work culture allegations, to complaints about harassment and inequities in pay and hiring, companies are being called out for diversity and inclusion failures in record numbers.”

Band-aid remedies don’t work. Recognize the path to redemption takes time, effort and facing the unvarnished truth. Pledge to move beyond statements.

Still, even as they are being called out, companies aren’t necessarily connecting the dots between their statements of support for diversity and their lack of effort to promote it within their own ranks, McAlpin said.

“Company statements can expose glaring disconnects. A single news story or viral social media post can kill a well-established insurance brand in seconds,” McAlpin said. “Therefore, during these unprecedented times, it is crucial for insurance carriers to reexamine the past for issues not yet put to bed. Review your organization’s leadership, history, HR and local market data, values and corporate purpose.”

Insurers say they are doing just that, working continually to promote diversity and inclusion within their own ranks.

Diverse Recruiting Pools

State Farm does not set specific quotas but the insurer workers hard to recruit from a diverse pool of candidates to find the best individuals for the job, said Public Affairs Specialist Gina Morss-Fischer.

She explained that the insurer as a matter of policy “does not tolerate or condone discrimination of any kind and believes it is “stronger and better when we seek the broadest perspectives.”

Right now State Farm’s current workforce is 40 percent minority and 57 percent female, she said, adding that as of the end of June State Farm’s new external hires were 68 percent minority and 62 percent female.

As well, the insurer provides training and mentoring to its employees and agents in order to help better ensure advancement opportunities, Morss-Fischer said. That includes recent work by State Farm Chief Diversity Officer Victor Terry with colleagues on a Diversity and Inclusion Agent Champion Network to “provide opportunities for agents of all backgrounds to build each other up and provide advice, resources and tools to be successful with their independent small businesses.”

Also State Farm has a new mentoring app that lets employees “select and connect with mentors who can provide them with the specific type of just-in-time support they need at various points in their career,” she added.

Other efforts include hosting of career fairs and interacting with prospective employees at conferences and workshops for women and minorities, and boosting State Farm’s presence on LinkedIn and other social sites to attract diverse talent.

Improving an “Inclusive Meritocracy”

Carriers such as Chubb have made specific statements about the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as plans to address systemic racism and reinforce efforts to promote diversity within the company.

Chubb President and CEO Evan Greenberg said during the insurer’s second-quarter 2020 earnings call that Chubb considers itself “an inclusive meritocracy” that works to make every employee feel comfortable and recognized for their contributions through a variety of efforts.

The insurer has developed a new action plan, Greenberg said, designed to help enhance “individual and collective understanding of racism in society and strive within Chubb to be antiracist” in its behavior.

Greenberg described plans to hold executives and other leaders accountable for leading an inclusive environment. The insurer, he said, has also developed plans to eliminate “policies and practices that potentially create bias and inhibit our ability to create a greater racial mix of our workforce at all levels of the company.”

The company’s website notes that it has a dedicated regional Diversity & Inclusion council with senior representatives from across Europe, Eurasia and Africa.

As well, Chubb’s website notes that it is working on areas including the gender pay gap.

“Difficult Conversations”

AIG CEO Brian Duperreault said the insurer is taking steps to address racial equality and improve diversity—issues raised globally by examples of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter protests that began earlier this summer.

These steps follow “courageous and often difficult conversations throughout our organization,” Duperreault noted during the insurer’s 2020 second-quarter earnings call on Aug. 4.

Duperreault said the insurer has worked in recent years “to foster a culture of diversity and inclusion,” but it recognizes the need to do more.

AIG also maintains a number of Employee Resource Groups that are designed to promote inclusion, employee engagement and a sense of belonging, according to the company’s website. Those groups include the Asian Leadership Network, Black Professionals & Allies, DisAbilities & Allies and Generations.

Other AIG Groups focus on interfaith issues, Latinos, LGPT employees and allies, multicultural and Middle Eastern employees, veterans, women, working families and young professionals.

Even InsurTechs are paying increasing attention to diversity issues.

Root, an InsurTech that sells renters and auto insurance digitally, recently announced plans to remove credit scores from its pricing model to build a fairer system. Root noted in its announcement that the use of credit scores and other demographic factors like occupation and education in car insurance rates builds bias into pricing. The insurer said that this process negatively impacts “historically under-resourced communities, immigrants, and those struggling to pay large medical expenses.”

In the end, McAlpin said, insurer efforts to create diversity within their ranks as well as support it in society come down to credibility.

“Credibility is key,” she said. “The wrong message or conflicting messages could appear desperate or offensive. Band-aid remedies don’t work. Recognize the path to redemption takes time, effort and facing the unvarnished truth. Pledge to move beyond statements and empower your leadership to walk the walk.”

Source: Carrier Management – 8/14/20 – Author: Mark Hollmer

Investors Back Startups for Commercial Auto, Climate Risk, High Risk Homes

An insurtech managing general agency focused on commercial auto insurance has raised $16 million in new Series A financing, a climate-risk related platform has $4.2 million in new seed financing, and a home insurance reciprocal and MGA focused on catastrophe-prone states is preparing to expand after raising another $35 million.

Here are their stories:

HDVI

High Definition Vehicle Insurance, an insurtech MGA co-founded by an Esurance pioneer that is focused on commercial auto insurance, raised $16 million in new financing.

Munich Re Ventures and 8VC led the Series A round, in which Qualcomm Ventures and Autotech Ventures also participated.

HDVI, a Chicago-based startup launched in 2018, said it will use the funding to scale up its growth, expand its products and hire more people. Specifically, this includes expanding the team, launching into new states, and launching additional technology features for agents, fleets, and drivers.

HDVI CEO and co-founder Chuck Wallace was a co-founder of Esurance (now part of Allstate). Another HDVI co-founder – Reid Spits is a former investors (at 8VC) who was focused on insurtech and logistics.

HDVI is targeting small and mid-size trucking fleets with its coverage and telematics technology. The company offers fleet operators an integrated suite of hardware, software and services that helps them manage their safety, compliance and operations, as well as an insurance product that rewards fleets and drivers for operating safely.

Demex Group

The Demex Group, a climate risk management and parametric insurance platform, raised $4.2 million in seed funding from financial services investors Anthemis and IA Capital Group.

The startup is based in the metro-Washington, D.C. area, and pitches its technology as helping to customize and deliver climate resilience through financial risk products and services on a global scale.

Plans call for using the money to build out the Demex team and to support go-to-market for municipalities and enterprise customers, which include Fortune 500 property managers with highly volatile year-to-year snow-removal expenses.

Operating at the intersection of banking and insurance, The Demex Group pitches itself as bringing together decades of experience across technology, finance, risk management, capital markets, commodities, insurance, and climate science to develop technology and customized financial solutions that mitigate unique weather risks and seize climate-linked business opportunities.

The Demex platform for climate resiliency is an “end-to-end ecosystem” designed to shield customers from the financial surprises of volatile weather so they can grow their businesses.

Matt Perlman, a partner at IA Capital Group, said the technology helps analyze client’s specific exposures in a “very granular way and generate a precisely calibrated risk transfer solution that goes far beyond traditional weather derivatives and represents the frontier of parametric insurance.”

A division of Munich Re – Munich Re Trading LLC (MRTL) – has a previous relationship with Demex, where they jointly developed customized weather index linked hedging instruments to help businesses manage non-catastrophic weather risks (MRTL provides weather risk transfer products and services for industries impacted by increased weather variability.) Demex said MRTL continues to provide risk capital and back office support.

Kin Insurance

Kin Insurance raised $35 million in new venture funding, attracting multiple investors including the investment arm of AAA Insurer CSAA Insurance Group.

The Chicago-based home insurer focused on catastrophe prone regions said that Commerce Ventures led the Series B round. Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd. (doing its reinsurance business as HSCM Bermuda), Flourish Ventures, QED, Alpha Edison, Allegis NL Capital, Avanta Ventures (venture arm of CSAA Insurance Group, a AAA Insurer), August Capital, the University of Chicago via its Startup Investment Program and others also participated.

To date, has raised $86 million, including the new round. With money in hand, Kin plans to expand its signature product from a Florida pilot to homeowners nationally, starting with states most affected by severe weather.

Kin’s last financing – $47 million secured in August 2019 – was designed to propel the launch of the company’s Kin Interinsurance Network, a Florida-based insurance carrier designed as a reciprocal insurance exchange so policyholders can have a voice in operations. The arrangement is also intended to give Kin more flexibility so it can innovate in customer-friendly ways and keep costs down. Kin also continues as a managing general agent and brokerage in Texas, Georgia and Alabama.

Kin said its proprietary platform allows the company to develop and launch new products in as little as a week, price risks in real time, and ingest more data than competitors. The company claims its technology also reduces general and administrative expenses – about 15 percent of premiums at legacy homeowner’s insurance companies.

Kin also sells its products directly to consumers rather than through outside agents.

Kin, now focused on growth, said it is actively hiring tech and sale talent in Chicago and in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Tech entrepreneurs Sean Harper (Kin’s CEO) and Lucas Ward launched Kin in 2016.

Source: Insurance Journal – 8/14/20 Authors: Mark Hollmer

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