Simplicity

Applied Systems Acquires EZLynx. WTF?

Broker Buddha CEO Jason Keck shares his thoughts on the Applied/EZLynx news and what it means for independent agencies.

Where does your Agency Management System fall short?

Nearly every agency owner asks me, “Which management system do you recommend? Because mine sucks.” Let's break down the reasons why.

Four ways being a dinosaur will cost your insurance agency.

Not only do dinosaurs become extinct, they're expensive. Here are four ways dinosaur tendencies cost money at commercial lines insurance agencies.

Insurance Office of America-Innovation Group

Based in northern California, Steve Miller of IOA wants to transform the insurance process and is leveraging technology to make it happen.

Worthy Insurance implements Broker Buddha platform.

Another innovative agency has joined our roster of users. We're pleased to announce that our software is worthy of Worthy.

Insurance, software, change, surprises, shock, comedy.

Surprising your customers, even when it's positive and transformational change, is no laughing matter.

Holmes Murphy adopts Broker Buddha platform.

With its commitment to fostering a positive workplace culture and outstanding service, Holmes Murphy knew our software would provide valuable benefits to staff and clients.

Davidson & Associates adopts Broker Buddha platform.

A four-time winner of the IIABA Best Practices Award, this WA-based agency has national reach. We're proud to add them to our roster of users.

TECHASSURE Virtual Summit 2020

It's not easy to pull off conferences in 2020, but last week's TechAssure Virtual Summit was immersive and engaging. When it comes to meeting virtually, TechAssure raised the bar.

We've got news.

We get tons of positive feedback about our software, but that doesn't mean we ever stop trying to make it better. Here's the latest on some of our recent efforts.

Is your agency like a doctor's office?

The most painful part of a visit to the doctor is often the paperwork and administrative details. Is your renewal and application process as tedious and redundant?

It took a pandemic to make insurance go digital?

The changed nature of business during the pandemic has forced many insurance agencies to embrace technology. In the end, that's going to serve the industry well.

Is your commercial insurance agency more T-Rex than tech?

Whether you're hoping to sell to a family member, a longtime employee, or an outside buyer, make sure the agency you leave is positioned for the future.

The NPS in commercial insurance: clients love Broker Buddha agencies.

The NPS has become the dominant tool when companies are analyzing vendors. Agencies that use the Broker Buddha platform get higher scores because they care about constantly improving the customer experience.

Labor Day: good. Paper forms for commercial insurance: bad.

As you power down for the long weekend, a quick reminder that paper forms—or clunky PDFs—are appreciated by, well, no one.

Do you like paper forms?

Back when these things happened, we went out on the streets to ask for some opinions on the ACORD 125.

Vertafore was acquired for how much?

Roper Technologies acquired Vertafore this past month. Our CEO, Jason Keck, weighs in on this news and the future of broker software.

Four Ways Insurance Agencies are Managing Through the Pandemic

In this unprecedented era, find out some of the ways smart commercial insurance agencies are working to serve clients now and position themselves for the future.

Patriotic

Rob Bowen wanted to make ACORD forms easier for his customers. Transforming complex paper forms and clunky PDFs into online smart forms makes clients happy and saves him time.

Make commercial insurance faster with new Dynamic Forms.

Our latest feature that makes the process of insurance faster: Dynamic Forms. No other platform has them.

Atlantic Shield

Erik Loesch of Atlantic Shield wants to grow his book without feeling pressure to recruit more people. Our software saves his producers and account managers so much time that he can scale up without needing to constantly hire.

What's in a name?

Not everyone loved our name at first, but it definitely helps people remember us. Leader's Edge says that puts us in good company.

FinTech Innovation Lab pays dividends.

The 12-week FinTech Innovation Lab program finished last week with Virtual Demo Day. We're excited to take what we learned from the experience to continue building and improving our platform.

For every insurance agent with kids who ask, "So what do you do all day?"

The pandemic has forced many agents to work from home. If your office colleagues now include young children, you're probably getting lots of questions. Our ebook for kids has answers.

Listening. Learning. Changing.

CEO Jason Keck shares his thoughts on social justice in this country, the discussions inside our company, and how he plans to be a part of positive change.

New dashboard. More speed for commercial insurance agents.

We've updated our dashboard. Simpler and more intuitive, it lets users can get more done in even less time.

Borden Perlman

New Jersey-based Borden Perlman uses Broker Buddha to reduce the hours agents spend on administrative tasks, creating more time for high-level advisory work.

Business insurance agencies: the time to go fully digital is now.

Nobody can predict the future exactly, but there's no doubt we're in for some dramatic change. Smart agencies are preparing for it now by embracing technology.

Usage is up and our team is growing.

Activity on our platform is increasing and we're adding experienced insurance professionals in Customer Success.

Flury-Hinderks

Bill Rowlen of Flury-Hinderks chose Broker Buddha over other options for its superior functionality and intuitive nature, making the transition to using it seamless.

Usage has tripled.

Even in uncertain times, our platform is gaining traction—usage has tripled in recent months.

What's our sales process?

Chief Revenue Officer Sean Harvey offers his thoughts on the sales process during this current time, and why the most tech-enabled agencies are positioned for success.

A virtual conversation with BrokerTech Ventures.

In February, we were selected for the Accelerator program at BrokerTech Ventures (BTV). We caught up with Susan Hatten, COO at BTV, and John Jackovin, Executive Director of the BTV Accelerator.

Broker Buddha Selected for FinTech Innovation Lab

After a rigorous selection process, we were invited to participate in FinTech Innovation Lab New York, Class of 2020. We're looking forward to working with this organization and finding new ways to refine our platform to make it even more valuable for our users.

Weaver & Associates

California-based Weaver & Associates is using pre-filled forms to speed the insurance process and the vastly improved customer experience sets the agency apart.

Going digital more important than ever for commercial insurance agencies.

We're not the only ones touting the importance of building a digital agency.

Hilb Group

Senior Account Manager Kim Moles can be intimidated by new technology but our intuitive software and expert Customer Success team made things easy.

Introducing Custom Form Bundles for commercial insurance.

Learn more about Form Bundles, the newest feature on our platform, and how you can customize them for your agency.

HUB International

Hub International agent Parker Christian uses the Broker Buddha platform to speed through detail-heavy work and get more time to grow his book.

Find out what these commercial insurance professionals said.

CEO Jason Keck hosted a free webinar last week with some top commercial insurance professionals. Watch it to find out how your colleagues are managing during these challenging times.

Our COVID-19 update.

It's an unprecedented situation. Here's what we're doing to ensure that Broker Buddha continues to serve its customers and its community.

Helping commercial insurance agencies help clients during COVID-19.

We developed an online smart form to make the PPP Loan application process easier, and it's free for any agency to use.

Web Links for First Notice of Loss

Our Web Links feature can help agents get the ACORD 1—First Notice of Loss—done in less time.

Build strong broker-client relationships. Even now.

As commercial insurance agencies work to serve clients during the coronavirus crisis, the brokers with the right tools are building better relationships by handling more requests efficiently.

Commercial Insurance and Coronavirus: Agents Talk

On Friday, March 27th, we're hosting a webinar with three agency leaders to share information that will help others navigate through the coronavirus pandemic.

I have coronavirus

Some thoughts about what it means to get sick or be around people who are...and what Broker Buddha is doing in the meantime.

Helping commercial insurance go faster.

Broker Buddha for Carriers is our newest feature—a secure portal that speeds the exchange of information between agents and underwriters.

Commercial Insurance and Tech Not So Different After All

I came to Broker Buddha from the tech world and had lots of preconceived notions about the world of insurance. Turns out most of them were wrong.

BrokerTech Ventures Made Us a First-Round Draft Pick

BrokerTech Ventures, backed by some of the leading independent agencies in the United States, chose us for their InsurTech 2020 Accelerator following our presentation during their Selection Series program. Things are moving fast—it starts on March 2nd.

Travelers Quarter and Rising Commercial Insurance Prices

Our take on Travelers latest quarter and how price pressure could help commercial insurance agencies in the year ahead.

For every commercial insurance agency manager who wonders, “What's really going on around here?”

Learn about our Weekly Report, an automated summary of all renewal and application actions that provides commercial insurance agency owners and managers a snapshot of the state of their business.

Commercial Insurance Schedules Painful?

Revising Schedules is tedious and time-consuming. Our Schedules Editor makes the process a lot less painful.

Team Grows at Broker Buddha.

We're adding new users and features every day—and growing our development team to continue making our platform as powerful as possible.

That's smooth! Eliminating friction between commercial insurance agents and carriers.

We're out to make the exchange of data between carriers and brokers seamless—it's a win-win.

Sage Underwriters

Chuck Holdren wanted his new firm to streamline the slow, painful insurance process, and embraced our platform to transform renewals and applications.

Commercial insurance and the pace of change.

Commercial insurance agencies can be slow to change. The renewal and application process is one example. My question: why?

White Glove Service for Commercial Insurance

Introducing White Glove Service, a feature that lets commercial insurance agencies get even more out of our platform.

A BIG day for InsureTech

A brief summary of what the Indio acquisition means for the insurance industry.

Happy Thanksgiving.

We'll tell you about our online smart forms for commercial insurance agencies later. Today, let's talk about Thanksgiving.

Top 10 Agency EPIC Brokers Chooses Broker Buddha.

EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants becomes the fifth Top Ten agency using our platform.

Find out what your clients really think—NPS Survey feature.

Our workflow for commercial insurance agencies will enhance the customer experience, save you time, and provide your Net Promoter Score.

Commercial insurance: your next clients will have new expectations.

In the future, more of your clients will be millennials. And they'll expect technology to make buying insurance easier.

They have questions. Our insurtech has answers.

Commercial insurance renewals happen faster when customers get answers quickly.

Use Web Links to Grow Your Agency.

Web Links embedded into your own site keep customers connected to you.

A Partnership Built for Speed.

Broker Buddha Announces New Partnership with Alkeme.

We're Expanding our Customer Success Team.

We're growing and adding great people.

Start renewals 90 days before you need them.

With our 90-Day Pre-Renewal Questionnaire. you can learn about changes well in advance of the renewal date—and adjust coverage as necessary.

For any commercial insurance agent who has ever said, “Hey, isn’t their renewal date coming up?”

Our daily, automated reminder emails start when the renewal date is seven days away.

This is big.

Broker Buddha Expands, Announces $4.5M Funding Round

Getting more from Small Commercial.

With Broker Buddha, our online Smart Forms make the upsell seamless. As your customers begin an application or renewal, they can choose to get quotes for additional coverages through intuitive on-screen prompts—without the stress of filling out more forms or providing more information. Or they can decline and move on, but this simple nudge can make them realize they need something they haven’t considered before, like protection against product liability or business interruption insurance.

Branding is Everything (Product Announcement)

Broker Buddha clients care about their brand and how their clients experience that brand online. Our latest release contains a great new feature that helps agencies brand the customer experience for their clients.

Welcome to the Agents of Enlightenment.

If you’re a CEO, a CFO, a General Counsel, or a Risk Manager, you know the value of an agent who is enlightened vs one that is mediocre. We want you to tell us about the smart broker who spotted a dangerous gap in your old coverage. The expert who changed your carrier to secure a more affordable policy. The one who made the whole process of applying for commercial insurance way easier than it ever was in the past.

Nexo

With their focus on fitness, Nexo brings valuable experience and expertise that translates into comprehensive, affordable coverage for their clients. But in an industry with many moving parts—literally and figuratively—the agency also realized that simplifying the application and renewal process would dramatically improve the customer experience. 

GuardPro

GuardPro found itself facing the challenge of managing more accounts without significantly increasing overhead. Instead of simply adding additional staff in more locations, they looked to leverage technology and create new efficiencies.

PWS & Company

One of the items on his service upgrade list was eliminating the almost completely blank forms that were emailed to clients at renewal time. Not only were they time-consuming and inefficient, he didn’t like the message they conveyed about his own brand.

Shield National

“You have existing clients—business you’ve already earned—and you’re making them wade through a bunch of paperwork every year just to continue their coverage,” said McOmie. “It didn’t make any sense to me.”

Insurance Brokers of Arizona

At Insurance Brokers of Arizona (IBOAZ), Emmylou Grubbs wanted to get more renewals done in less time and enhance customer relationships. Our software was the solution.

Millward

Wade Millward, who spearheads operations at the agency, was quick to see how Broker Buddha could benefit the company. He knew that our application would dramatically speed the collection of information and let his agents work more efficiently.

Insurance applications and renewals without barriers

At her agency, Kicker Insures Me, Cardenas relies on a small but dedicated staff. The last thing she wants to do is force her team to spend time requesting information from clients which the client has already provided. But because the insurance industry uses PDFs as a way of storing data, and because text annotations on PDFs aren’t easily searchable, agents frequently can’t find the information they need, even when the client has already provided it.

Insurance policy renewals and applications without headaches

While being a new agency comes with its own set of challenges, the ability to create workflows from scratch was a genuine opportunity. Finding a better process for insurance applications and renewals led RPM to Broker Buddha. The platform became a key component in the effort to build an agency that moves information seamlessly while delivering a customer experience that leaves people thinking, “Wow, it’s never been this easy before.”

A turn-key solution for commercial insurance pre-renewal operations.

After getting familiar with Broker Buddha and the seeing the efficiencies it creates, Tonya Westfall of Hilb Group knew it offered real advantages to both her agency and her clients. It also fit perfectly with the mandate at the agency to automate more processes throughout their business, and she knew that the opportunities for saving time, money, and human resources during the pre-renewal process were enormous.

Taking the friction out of insurance policy renewals.

“…nobody wants to wait for anything anymore.” And when your target market is startup companies, many of them in the technology space, it’s even more critical that renewals are point-and-click instead of phone-and-fax.

Built In (Customer) Success

As a CEO, I believe that support and training don’t end after your first week... whether you are an employee or a customer with us. That would be crazy! We are always here to provide answers and take care of our clients.

What Happens When I Join Broker Buddha?

So you’ve decided to join us at Broker Buddha. Awesome! Now what? Unlike some platforms, starting with Broker Buddha includes a personalized training process. We want to ensure you are set up for success and fully understand each feature we offer so you get the most out of our platform.

In App Chat

Improving the user experience means always adding features, like the In App Chat. Interactive, easy-to-use, it lets everyone stay connected while providing a professional way to stay on top of the progress of applications and renewals. Modeled after the highly efficient comment feature in Google Docs, the In App Chat allows for easy collaboration and instant multi-user communication.

Data Entry SUCKS!

Data entry REALLY sucks. No one ever wants to do it, but its such an important and fundamental part of the insurance application process. To be honest, I am not even sure what is considered the worst part of data entry. That it's boring, or that it’s a waste of valuable time. Time that you could be selling, consulting, and making a blueprint for the expansion of your operation. A bigger problem, is that because people dread data entry they often try to cut corners, put it off for too long, or do it incorrectly.

PDFs Are Dumb

I live my life with three core values...Adventure, Hospitality & Creativity. And while "going paperless" may be creative for some, I have a bigger goal. I want to eliminate PDFs.

If You Can’t Beat ’Em: How to Join the InsurTech Movement

Although InsurTech was once believed to be a threat to independent agencies, many agency owners now realize they can use technology to get ahead in a competitive market. But finding the right approach isn’t that simple. The right approach to InsurTech can help you overtake your competition, while the wrong choice can set you back years. Agency owners who get this right will be the ones you read about for the next decade. With so many options on the table, owners face a classic strategy question: build, buy or partner?

How Does the Cloud Impact Data Ownership and Privacy?

The importance of data privacy is at an all-time high, and there are no excuses for getting it wrong. As the entire insurance industry embraces the cloud, independent agents must work harder to understand data privacy, as well as the difference between ownership and right-to-use client information. Anyone who understands the insurance industry knows that access to data is the key to success. But who owns the data? Who is allowed to use it? And for what purpose? When information is shared over the phone and via email, the answers to these questions are unclear. But with the rise of InsurTech, there is an opportunity for greater clarity.

You Rely on Your Agency Management System - We Make it Simpler

We’ve worked hard to simplify this process for you by creating a huge library of Smart Forms to collect information which we transfer to your Agency Management System - elevating the entire insurance broker & client experience into the 21st century. Here are the three main problems with Agency Management Systems and how we solve them.

Google Revamps Chrome With Long-Awaited Facelift

When we started building Broker Buddha, we swore that it would be different. After seeing countless insurance technology products with painful design paradigms and frustrating user experience, we knew that we could use design as a differentiator.

PDFs are the Devil —Solving the Major Pain Point of Carrier Supplementals

Face it, paper insurance forms are a hassle. Often, you and your insureds have to fill out tons of paperwork — a process that takes hours. PDF forms aren't much better. Most of the forms ask a bunch of the same questions. Why should you have to answer them twice! Clients often need to print a document, sign it, scan it and send it back to their broker. Surely, there's an easier way to process applications?

What Do Shazam and InsureTech Have in Common?

Although you probably don’t use “music” and “insurance” in the same sentence very often, the two industries have a lot more in common than you think. For example, they’re both massive industries, they’re both highly fragmented industries, and they both suffer from a painful lack of structure when it comes to information.

Customer Experience Changes Everything: 5 Companies That Get It Right

When you’re not the only game in town, competing on price is not an option. There are always competitors who will offer their services for less. Successful businesses differentiate themselves through powerful technology, modern design, and world class service to deliver a unique & memorable customer experience. These five organizations have found the exact formula to build long-term customer loyalty, so that their clients return again and again.

The One Place Robots Won't Take Over - Ever

There is a lot of hype in the news about robots taking over jobs. From the New York Times predicting that the next generation will be run by robots to the BBC claiming that robotic automation will replace hundreds of millions of jobs within a decade or so. But don’t panic. When it comes to advising businesses on making complex insurance decisions, robots simply cannot replace humans. In fact, they will probably make life easier.

The People We Value Most

We love selfless, reliable and resourceful go-getters, who have a burning desire to do something amazing, a true awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, and a willingness to learn and grow. That’s who I am. That’s who we are.

Meet Simplicity

Simplicity is also what you’ll find here...in our stories. We’ll share everything about what we believe with you...not just the tools we build, but also how we communicate. In the first entry I’m happy to introduce you to - Simplicity, by Broker Buddha.

Broker Buddha on Spot on Insurance!

Broker Buddha on Agency Nation

Insurtech Namaste With Jason Keck, CEO of Broker Buddha