By Jon Hughes

Even in the best of economic times, the Florida insurance market presents challenges in terms of a unique governance model and frequent losses due to natural disasters. Not surprisingly, following the especially volatile storm seasons of 2004 and 2005 many insurance companies stopped writing homeowners insurance in Florida creating a void in the insured market and demand for homeowners and wind insurance. For start-ups like HomeWise Insurance, this situation was a golden opportunity to take over some policies from state-run Citizens Assumption and provide reliable wind coverage to Florida homeowners.

When HomeWise entered the market in 2006, demand was high for experienced, financially-sound insurance companies offering homeowners coverage. Strategically, moving rapidly to handle this new business made sense, but since the company was starting out with a small, strategic staff, HomeWise executives knew ramping up in time to take advantage of the market opportunity would be difficult.

Finding a way to quickly process the new business was critical to HomeWise's potential success, so outsourcing core business processes instead of taking time to build in-house staff levels seemed a logical course of action. HomeWise had a system in place for wind insurance but felt a different solution was needed for the homeowners market. Blue Cod Technologies, Inc. (Blue Cod) had been processing business for insurance companies serving the Florida market for several years with great success, and after recommendations and deep due diligence, HomeWise decided to consider Blue Cod as the company's primary business process outsourcing (BPO) provider.