Pathpoint, a new digital E&S wholesale insurance brokerage, is making its debut. The San Francisco-based company bills itself as the industry’s first all-digital company of its kind built from the ground up.

A formal start for Pathpoint follows a soft launch that has been underway for several months involving several hundred agents in six states. The soft launch, in turn, follows two years of development of a proprietary platform that enables the service. Pathpoint is licensed across the U.S. and a coverholder at Lloyd’s of London, and it distributes admitted and non-admitted products across multiple lines of business to U.S.-based retail agents.

The company connects retail agents and E&S carriers through its proprietary platform, which is built to quote and bind Excess & Surplus lines coverage. Pathpoint said that the company distributes E&S products more cheaply than other wholesalers because of efficiencies gained from the technology, allowing it to offer expanded distribution, reduced costs and lower operating costs, and reduced placement costs — and increased market intelligence.

According to Pathpoint, its digital platform provides insurance agents with efficient and transparent access to multiple bindable quotes from best-in-class E&S carriers in minutes. E&S coverage offered by Pathpoint comes from carriers including Chubb-owned Westchester, Hiscox, Beazley, and Crum & Forster.

The San Francisco firm has also raised $6 millino in venture capital thus far, backed by SciFi VC, Founders Fund, and Caffeinated Capital.

Bobby Touran, Pathpoint co-founder and CEO, said his company addresses an E&S market that he argues is “complex” with “a combination of hard-to-place business, a fragmented distribution chain with high distribution costs, and many state-level regulations.”

That complexity, he said, has prevented E&S wholesalers from benefiting from digitization and the efficiencies it can bring.

“Our software and digitally-accessible insurance products are improving E&S distribution for everyone in the value chain – retail agents, carriers and insureds. Wholesale brokers are at the center of the current distribution model, and we have assumed that role and built software into every step of the procurement process,” Touran said.

Retail agents receive their commission for every risk bound on Pathpoint, and there is no cost for them to use the platform. With one submission on Pathpoint, agents can find out in minutes which carriers have the appetite for a risk and at what price, Pathpoint explained. The company asserted its software lets agents “easily quote, bind coverage, and receive official policy documentation” with support from experienced surplus lines professionals. Such a process can be completed in minutes, the company claims.

Carriers also gain instant access to data that helps them learn more about product demand, which Pathpoint said can help them better manage this process.

Source: Pathpoint