Entrepreneurial Insurance Symposium showcases Shark Tank competition featuring forward-thinking innovation in the insurance industry.
By Paul Binsfeld, president of Company Nurse, LLC and Enspiri Solutions, LLC
I had the good fortune to attend the Entrepreneurial Insurance Symposium in September, and was in good company with many influential leaders in the insurance space. The event was an incubator-inspired forum supporting new insurance concepts and ideas.
Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance© (EIA) is an amalgamation of companies supporting innovation in the insurance industry. EIA participants included companies from investment, underwriting, technology, processing and distribution segments. Its goal is to assure good ideas reach market and are not lost in the morass of legal, investment and processing challenges.
The highlight of the symposium was the Shark Take challenge for which my Enspiri Solutions partner, Steve Schmutz, and I were invited to compete – and the competition was stiff. Seven of us shared progressive concepts coming to market. These ideas will change the face of the insurance industry.
So, what’s the next big thing? Check out this roundup of the Shark Tank finalists – including Enspiri – as featured in PropertyCasualty360:
Escape the Wolf
Escape the Wolf is a company that focuses on workplace violence prevention and response, terrorism identification and crisis management. The company’s Zero Trace products are a tailored line of travel accessories designed to increase travel and data security, and the line includes a cell phone pouch, travel bag pouch for a laptop, and RFID passport. The pouches block signals from electronic devices making them undetectable to hackers.Enspiri Solutions
Enspiri Solutions
Enspiri Solutions provides a software program designed for workers’ compensation nurse triage. The software combines medical guidelines, a report distribution platform, and a database of approximately 12,000 medical facilities that treat workers’ comp cases. The company also provides nurses and related services to companies entering the nurse triage industry. This allows insurance companies to offer telephonic work injury triage services around the clock, without having to staff during off-peak hours or weekends.
Cortaga
Cortaga was built to provide light duty fleets with a way to monitor and correct drivers’ safety habits in order to reduce auto accidents and insurance-related costs. It’s a mobile application that is installed on an employee’s phone or tablet, and it monitors distracted driving, speeding, braking and acceleration, as well as providing accident detection with claim reporting. It was designed for ease of use by management and has reports built for underwriters to see the progress of an employee’s driver safety. It also includes such features as real-time GPS, geo-fencing, and breadcrumb trails.
Livegenic
Livegenic is a cloud-based real-time video platform designed to help insurance organizations reduce claims handling costs and improve customer satisfaction. The mobile-based technology lets claims professionals see what the customer sees to help with the first notice of loss, underwriting, field operations, supplemental claims, and other workflows without disconnecting from the calling customer. The company provides field-loss documentation to help insurances receive, handle and collaborate using the content of audiovisual documentation.
Risk Genie
Risk Genie is a web-based risk management platform geared toward small businesses and entrepreneurs. It generates a personalized risk management plan tailored for the business’s risk needs. The platform has 10 risk categories — including property, liability and employee risk, for example — with multiple subcategories that businesses would review to create plans for their companies or specific departments within those companies.
Surete
The winner of the innovation competition was Surete, an app and device combination developed by SmartDrive, to keep drivers safe by eliminating distractions such as texting, email or surfing social media while driving. The app can also dramatically reduce the underwriting risk insurance companies take on when insuring drivers and can help lower the number of claims filed significantly. To use Surete — which is targeted to the parents of teen drivers — an owner would install the Surete device in a vehicle, download the app and start adding users to an account. As a driver approaches the car, Surete will automatically sync to the smart phone and disable the distractions so the driver can pay attention on the road. If the phone doesn’t sync to the device, the car won’t start, ensuring the driver can’t bypass the app. Parents can log into the online portal and control the functionality of the phone and access advanced features.
As the writer, Rosalie L. Donlon, of PropertyCasualty360 noted, “Innovation and creativity is alive and well in the insurance industry.” I honor EIA’s commitment to help an insurance entrepreneur take a good idea from start to finish, and help bring their innovative products to market.
Paul Binsfeld was recently appointed to the Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance Advisory Board of Directors. Binsfeld has over 25 years of experience in workers’ compensation and is one of the most influential leaders in the workers’ compensation industry.