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Hub, Bold Penguin team up to buy Insureon

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Hub, Bold Penguin team up to buy Insureon

Hub International Ltd. and insurtech Bold Penguin are partnering to buy online insurance agency Insureon, the companies announced Tuesday.

Hub will acquire Chicago-based Insureon’s digital insurance agency and brand and Columbus, Ohio-based Bold Penguin will acquire its technology platform.

Terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this month, were not disclosed.

“Insureon really provides for us an opportunity to transact business with our customers in a digital way both from a service and a product standpoint,” said Marc Cohen, president and CEO of Hub, in an interview.

The Insureon agency operations will become part of Hub’s specialty program business, which is headed by Chris Treanor.

Insureon, which launched in 2011, offers various lines of coverage to small businesses, including business owners policies, general liability, auto liability, workers comp and errors and omissions coverage.

“We expect to bring additional coverage on to that platform in time and focus on more industry-specific solutions like event cancellation policies, cyber and builders risk,” Mr. Cohen said.

In addition, Hub plans to expand Insureon’s affinity program business, he said.

“The vision is to be able to put the Insureon platform on every Hub employees’ desk so they have access to the carriers for a digital experience and also to open up new strategic partnerships where we could potentially embed our digital capabilities into third-party platforms,” Mr. Cohen said.

About 125 of the Insureon staff will join Hub and 31 will join Bold Penguin. Dan Kazan, CEO of Insureon, will work with both companies and Jeff Kroeger, its chief commercial officer, will join Hub.

For Bold Penguin, which was bought by American Family Insurance Mutual Holding Co. last year, the deal will bring in a team of technical experts with knowledge of the commercial insurance sector, who can often be hard to recruit, said Ben Clarke, co-founder and chief data officer of the online insurance exchange and technology company.

“It also gives us a chance to work with Hub more extensively,” he said. “Insureon has also focused on a couple of coverage lines that we haven’t, specifically management and professional liability, and it allows us? to deepen our relationship with carriers.”