Most people in our business love to denigrate Flo and the gecko as “commoditized” insurance, a cookie-cutter sales and service approach that only works for the most basic personal lines coverage. Online rate shopping, instant quotes and web-based customer service may be convenient, but they have nothing to do with the needs of the commercial buyer – needs that only the “trusted advisor” can deliver.

But what if a broker could make those same methods work for commercial property-casualty sales and service?

Woodruff-Sawyer & Co. is betting that they can.

Last month the San Francisco-based brokerage announced the launch of BizInsure, a commercial insurance website designed for small businesses and professionals to price and buy coverage online.

The platform, two years in the making, currently only offers professional liability insurance and E&O, with other commercial products to be rolled out later.

BizInsure allows buyers to:

Compare multiple quotes from top-rated insurers with no obligation to buy
Customize coverages to profession and compare online
Purchase online with credit card and option to pay monthly
Receive policy documents and certificates by email instantly after purchase
Access Woodruff-Sawyer's licensed reps anytime throughout the policy period.

As Flo and the gecko already know, success depends on technology, which hasn't been available for commercial businesses and individual professionals with revenues of less than $2 million, said Greg Morris, president of the new enterprise and a Woodruff-Sawyer partner and senior vice president focusing on property-casualty and financial lines insurance. It's an attractive and underserved market that has been on Woodruff-Sawyer's radar for years, but wasn't accessible because these clients can require the same processing and service as a middle-market client and ”the margin just isn't there,” he said.

The plan clicked into place after the brokerage found BizCover, the online arm of Mega Capital, an Australian professional risks insurance broker with the technology expertise needed for the project.

A quick look at the website is an interesting reveal. Starting with the landing page, which features a picture of a stereotypical geeky insurance agent – big glasses and briefcase — and the verbiage (“Could the world go on without traditional insurance agents? We think so. We've simplified the process and replaced overhead with affordability”), the site seems to emulate the big online insurers. There's easy click-through, with big tabs for “professional liability insurance” and “errors and omissions insurance,” and insurer branding (Chartis, CNA, Hiscox, Liberty and Philadelphia) at the bottom of the page.

What you won't find on the site is any Woodruff-Sawyer branding. That's because BizInsure is a separate company. The brokerage is a 50 percent investor and currently providing the office space and some management services, Morris said.

The design is no accident: The model is similar to a site like Esurance, but Woodruff-Sawyer is acting as an agent and providing customers with choice and direct access to multiple insurance companies, Morris said.

BizInsure is unique to the marketplace, offering “all of the things that people expect from a high-quality agent–product expertise, a high degree of customer service, market access and clout–combined with the efficiencies, cost effectiveness and immediacy of a cutting edge technology platform,” Morris said.

With a capital investment of at least $1 million, Woodruff-Sawyer is serious about making BizInsure work. They're measuring performance on policy count, as well as top and bottom line growth. “In a direct-to-consumer model like this, marketing spend is critical,” Morris said. “We had 100 policies sold after our first month and hope to have several thousand sold after our first year.”

BizInsure's business model is the future for independent agents, Morris said. In fact, the brokerage wants to expand the model to serve independent agents. The big challenges involve balancing technology, marketing and the insurance aspects of the business – not to mention the regulatory aspects, because they operate in all 50 states.

BizInsure raises an interesting question: Can the world go on without traditional insurance agents? And will sites like these help agencies grow in an online world, or drive them closer to extinction?

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