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2018 US Insurance Awards: Risk Placement Services Inc., Insurtech Initiative of the Year

Posted On: Apr. 2, 2018 12:00 AM CST

2018 US Insurance Awards: Risk Placement Services Inc., Insurtech Initiative of the Year

Finding the right insurance can be an onerous task for a small business and is a big reason why many avoid cyber liability insurance.

With the traditional process, a small business might first go to its insurance broker, which, in turn, asks the business to fill out a lengthy application with dozens of questions. Completing that application is time-consuming for the broker, too, and it could take days or even weeks to come up with a quote.

The process can be even more drawn-out when the expertise of a wholesale broker is needed.

Risk Placement Services — headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, and one of the largest managing general agents in the United States — is digitalizing that old-school process with an online platform for its flagship cyber insurance product that has slashed the time to convert an initial quote to an issued policy to mere minutes from the standard 60 days.

RPS’s efforts earned it the Insurtech Initiative of the Year award during the inaugural Business Insurance U.S. Insurance Awards, held in New York.

Since that launch, RPS has expanded the platform, RPSSmallBusiness.com, to include additional offerings, such as executive liability, professional liability and crisis resilience products.

“The insurance industry has made it a very confusing, obfuscated process for the end user to procure insurance through archaic applications and bundles of information they have to attach,” said RPS Chief Digital Officer Ryan Collier. “My goal was to simplify the process, making it literally two minutes rather than two months.”

RPS currently offers 13 online products, though new products are added every month.

To date, more than 25,000 policies have been bound on the platform, most in less than two minutes, according to the company.

“The fastest we’ve ever had from a quote-bind-issue is 97 seconds,” said Mr. Collier, who has been with RPS for about 18 years. “We’re helping to make retail brokers stay relevant and viable by giving their customers, essentially, instant gratification.” 

Finalists:

• Corax Cyber Security Inc.
• Crawford & Co.
• Pegasystems Inc.
• The Institutes

2018 Business Insurance US Insurance Awards home