If a coffee enthusiast decides to build a coffee shop somewhere, chances are they’ll end up Googling “liability insurance” and attempting to traverse the complex legal web to get all of that nailed down before they even sell their first iced latte.
Instead, Inaki Berenguer hopes they’ll come across CoverWallet in their Google search, which simplifies the process of setting up commercial insurance for a small business. The company is now attempting to take another step forward by stating that it will develop an open-ended tool that will allow third parties to plug directly into its services, allowing small businesses to obtain commercial insurance while going through the flow of another set of SMB management software. All of this is done to ensure that more and more users can begin using the service, allowing it to gain new business — and data — even if it means handing off some of the branding and user experience to another firm.
“[When I launched my last company] and we came to New York with three people, we were advised that if you want to sign a lease, you have to acquire insurance.” Berenguer explained. “I wanted to go to a website, input my square footage and revenue, get a quotation, and complete everything else in five to ten minutes — but I was informed that wasn’t possible for business insurance.” I had to go to a general provider, fill out a 20-page PDF, which the broker then sends to the insurance company, and they’d get back to me with a price. This is an analogue, time-consuming, and obtuse technique. I’m aware that this procedure can be reimagined. There are 25 million small enterprises in the United States, and they all require insurance.”
CoverWallet is similar to what Berenguer described in his dream scenario when he was relocating his previous company into an office. The insurance policies are tailored to the needs of restaurants, startups, retail establishments, contractors, and a variety of other commercial insurance products. Users enter their business details, then pay for the plans — either up front or in monthly instalments — and have their policy set up in no time. If that doesn’t work, CoverWallet has a team of agents to help with the remainder of their inquiries, and users can change any of their policies at any time.
But, in the end, it’s possible that users want to keep things simple – especially if they’re a small- to medium-sized firm that isn’t the kind of technically adept one that you’d find in a major metropolitan region like New York or San Francisco. While CoverWallet seeks to simplify the entire process of obtaining commercial insurance, which can be a major impediment to getting something as simple as a coffee shop off the ground, integrating into other tools and making the entire process more and more seamless ensures that it will be able to keep that flow of businesses coming in — and those businesses may eventually start spreading the word on their own.
“Some companies may already be using accounting software or payroll,” Berenguer explained. “Those systems include all of the company’s information.” Why should they come to a platform and input everything when the information is available elsewhere? It’s the same as white labelling your solution. However, if you want to be customer-focused, the less they have to type, the better.”
There isn’t much stopping the larger insurance companies from providing a similar type of plug-and-play API. However, Berenguer believes that aggregating all of those insurance providers and then providing that pipeline to customers as they look to pick up insurance through another SMB tool like Gusto (though Gusto isn’t one of the clients) provides a compelling enough argument for those employment suites to bring them in. Certain providers may only offer certain types of plans or cover specific geographic locations, and CoverWallet intends to make a strong enough argument to fill all of those gaps.