The Cowbell Factors Podcast is back with Season 2! In its first episode, our podcast host, Alexis Vaughn, invited our very own VP of National Accounts and Strategic Partners, Dan Law, to discuss digital insurance and how Cowbell uses it to drive value for agents, brokers, and policyholders.
As VP of National Accounts & Strategic Partners, Dan focuses on creating and building out relationships with brokers and strategic partners nationwide, to further extend Cowbell’s digital distribution offerings.
Dan joined Cowbell in 2020, attracted to our approach of building a company that questions the traditional method of acquiring cyber insurance.
“Traditionally, applications are lengthy and paper-based, and businesses are asked to answer cumbersome, complex questions about their digital ecosystems and IT environment. Underwriting was done manually, based on the provided answers. This leaves room for human error and subjective interpretations. Cowbell was founded on changing that methodology. After all, why assess a digital exposure in a non-digital environment?”
The solution: digital insurance. “Most insurance providers host some of their processes in a digital environment. With Cowbell, the entire ecosystem is driven digitally.” Everything is done online, including initial intake, risk assessment, policy creation, delivery, and even our closed-loop approach to risk management.
The advantages are numerous for agents, brokers, and policyholders alike.
“Some people believe that digital insurance was created to replace agents and brokers when in reality, the opposite is true: we want to empower them by giving them the right tools to be successful. Digitization enables us to operate at a speed and scale that cannot be accomplished manually. We can ingest massive amounts of data in near-real-time to assess and interpret risk, and drive quote proposals and coverage back out to agents and brokers in minutes.”
The time saved can be used to drive tangible value to policyholders. “Our instant quoting and binding process gives brokers the time back that they can now use to solve immediate problems of insureds. Cowbell eliminates the paperwork aspect, the administrative burden, and all the hassle that comes with the day-to-day work of supporting clients, and instead enables agents and brokers to focus their efforts on providing support for their insureds.”
“Some people believe that digital insurance was created to replace agents and brokers when in reality, the opposite is true: we want to empower them by giving them the right tools to be successful.”
Businesses don’t only benefit from their brokers having more bandwidth to help with issues. Cowbell has built entire ecosystems to create value in several areas of an organization’s cyber posture.
“Cowbell works with a lot of partners on the distribution side who are focused on engaging and empowering the insureds directly. Furthermore, we created the first insurance-focused distribution APIs between policyholders and cybersecurity providers, so that information for commercial insurance applications can be collected and delivered.”
“What’s more is that we can, based on somebody’s cyber risk profile, provide ongoing insights and recommendations on how to manage and improve the risk as it changes throughout the policy lifecycle.”
“Cowbell is collaborating with Microsoft, Google, and AWS to create Connectors that show vulnerabilities, provide them step-by-step instructions on how to fix them, and confirm when they cleared an item and made an adjustment. The number of claims that have been avoided by us driving information and insights to our policyholders is numerous.”
The biggest challenge in digital insurance lies in awareness. “Driving adoption and understanding can be challenging. A lot of agents and brokers are set in their way, and insureds expect their paper applications.”
But Dan is hopeful that this will change in the future. “The adoption of cyber insurance is still pretty low, especially with small businesses, but they are not immune against ransomware attacks anymore. We want to drive digitization for our agency and broker partners so they can drive the value into the hands of the insureds. Digital is the way to make that happen.”
If you are interested in getting appointed with Cowbell Cyber, you can reach out to us through our website, or by writing to ntrapvrf@pbjoryyplore.nv.
You can visit the Cowbell Factor Podcast library to listen to last season’s episodes and stay up to date on new ones. It is available on most Podcast platforms (Spotify, Google podcast, Apple podcast, Anchor, Breaker, and Radio Public).
