When I was transitioning out of my previous tech company, an acquaintance mentioned the untapped potential of the insurance industry for my next step. He saw how a young and hungry startup could really shake things up by replacing traditional elements in the distribution chain like the insurance broker. When I founded Indio, I found out how wrong he was.
Executive Summary
The grueling process of buying business insurance prompts some startup execs to think about cutting insurance brokers out of the distribution chain entirely, and Indio's Michael Furlong was no different. But he came to understand that removing the middleman is absolutely the wrong approach as he recognized their value to insureds in explaining the complexities of their risks and in identifying areas of exposure and policy gaps. Instead of tackling the entire process, Indio found its disruptive niche in digitizing applications.At the time, getting rid of brokers made perfect sense to me since I had just gone through the grueling and confusing process of applying for business insurance myself. The application process was slow, paperwork-heavy and a legally obligated necessary evil. Even for a small company, it was unnecessarily complex and confusing.
I began to wonder: Why couldn’t this grueling, back-and-forth process be digitized to make things easier? Why not just cut out the middleman?
It didn’t take long to realize the true value that the broker brings to the insurance process. At that point, I redirected Indio’s focus to enabling the broker so they could do their job more effectively, as opposed to replacing them. That is when Indio transformed into the successful platform it is today.
