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50 Best Companies to Watch 2022

Business insurance industry veteran now delivering an outstanding digital experience: CoverEase

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CoverEase, a digital insurance broker, has reinvented the way businesses shop, purchase, and save on the insurance products they need the most for their business. CoverEase uses advanced technology to offer an online “Amazon-like” shopping experience with unmatched quotes from the best insurance company brands in the country.

In a 3-minute online journey, CoverEase shops the insurance marketplace to present options from over 15 different insurance companies for multiple coverage types. They offer the consumer a “choice” model with complete pricing transparency, giving the buyer the power to choose which insurance company they want to buy from.

During the 3-minute online journey business owners answer basic questions about their business, and in 15 seconds, Lightning Max (CoverEase’s eager quote retrieving Golden Retriever mascot) delivers multiple quotes from multiple insurance companies “on the glass” giving the buyer instant pricing. Once the online journey is complete, CoverEase’s team of experts are available to answer questions about purchasing the most coverage at the best price.

The result? The typical long and complicated process of quoting and buying business insurance and group employee benefits has been transformed into a lightning fast, easy, and awesome experience. The types of coverage available include no down-payment workers’ compensation, business liability and cyber liability that includes monitoring exposures to cyber threats. The platform also offers, individual term life coverage, plus group health, dental and vision insurance. CoverEase works with the top insurance companies including The Hartford, Travelers, Liberty Mutual, C N A, Markel, Berkshire Guard, EMPLOYERS, AmTrust, Anthem, United Health Care, Blue Shield, Beam Dental and Vision, Cowbell Cyber, Great American, and Ethos Life, among others.

CoverEase is especially excited about their instant quote and purchase Term Life Insurance product for individuals, key employees and business owners that need more than a basic life policy. If you’re healthy, you can quote, apply, and get up to $2 million in coverage online in under 10 minutes. They leverage real-time underwriting that takes the pain out of purchasing life insurance.

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They believe it’s an important coverage for individuals, business owners and key employees that’s often overlooked or passed over, due to the industry requiring medical exams and blood tests to get coverage. That’s not the case with CoverEase’s offering through Ethos. “Before adding Ethos to our marketplace, I needed “proof of concept” prior to adding the product to our platform” commented Shawn Edgington. It’s why I quoted, applied for, and received a $1 million dollar 20-year term policy for myself, that was ½ the price of my in-force term life policy. The best part was that neither a medical exam nor bloodwork was required to issue the policy. All the underwriting happened in real time, during the application process. This is a complete game-changer in the life insurance industry continued Shawn Edgington.

CoverEase also works with business channel partners to embed a white-labeled version of their platform to a partner’s website, allowing their customers to save time and money buying business insurance and employee benefits while purchasing other business-related goods and services.

In conversation with Shawn Marie Edgington, Founder & CEO of CoverEase

Q. What was the motivation behind starting CoverEase?

Great question. The process of shopping and purchasing business insurance, employee benefits and life insurance has always been exhausting and time-consuming. It can take days, weeks and often months with too many paper applications needed to receive comparative quotes from multiple insurance companies. Before CoverEase became a reality, my team worked with our clients in parallel with multiple company underwriters to finalize their quotes. For example, workers’ compensation can get shopped with 10+ different insurance companies to confirm we’re presenting the best pricing to our clients. That’s a lot of back and forth and wait time during the underwriting process. I’m always asking myself: How can we improve the customer experience when it comes to shopping for insurance without removing the value of our experience and expertise?

Back in 2018, Joe Fox, VP of AmTrust North America, walked into our offices and said, “You know Shawn, AmTrust just launched this “API technology”, which I’m just now learning about. I think it’s something that you would really like to participate in.” Once he explained the concept of what their technology did, I knew that it was the beginning of how I was going to completely change the way business insurance was quoted and purchased. We’ve been building and expanding our API platform since that initial conversation. We held off the release of CoverEase’s beta platform until 2021, giving us time to integrate the 15 insurance companies and coverage lines, so that we could offer multiple quotes and coverage types at the same time.  

Q. How do you verify the credibility of the insurance companies before they are integrated into your platform?

Compatible technology, real time underwriting, competitive pricing, underwriting appetite and service levels are all important aspects that we vet during the process of adding a new carrier to our platform. We are extremely particular with the insurance company’s we choose to represent so that we maintain as pleasant a customer experience as possible, while having the ability to offer the most quotes to cover the most industries at a price that’s extremely competitive. 

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Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

We just wrapped up our integration with Beam Dental & Vision development and testing has been completed and instant quotes are now available. We’re also under development with Pie Insurance Company, which will be the 9th workers’ compensation company on our platform. Pie is a great company for a lot of reasons, including the placement of more difficult-to-place workers’ compensation risks.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Exciting doesn’t even start to explain our future, which is funny because not many people find insurance “exciting”. As our platform evolves, we’re able to accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and save time, which is great for the company, our customers, our carriers, and our channel partners.

Our CoverEase advertising campaign launched nationally in August, 2022 with commercials featuring Lightning Max, our quote fetching golden retriever mascot. A sneak peak of our first advertisement can be seen here.

CoverEase received its WBENC certification last month. It’s the gold standard for women owned businesses in the United States. We’re also in the process of onboarding several large channel partners, which offers a fabulous opportunity for all parties.

I’ve been involved in the business insurance industry for over 30 years… and now, more than ever, I love being a small part of leading our industry into the InsurTech frontier. CoverEase is one of the first brokerages to offer Beam’s Dental and Vision products “on the glass,” which I am honored to be a part of. 

Because CoverEase leverages InsurTech in a unique way, we have significant advantages over the competition. It’s never been easier to quote, underwrite and offer the ability to purchase all types of business insurance and group employee benefits than it is today.

Meet the leader behind the success of CoverEase

Shawn Marie Edgington, an insurance veteran, leveraging technology to achieve a lighting fast, easy and awesome way for businesses to shop, compare and buy most types of business insurance and employee benefits. CoverEase, is powered by AI plus her talented team of insurance experts, making CoverEase a unique addition to the InsurTech space. CoverEase is a national company, headquartered in California, with offices in New York. The company was founded by Shawn and launched in 2022. Shawn serves as the CEO and has the “best of the best” team of insurance professionals who are working hard every day to ensure the success of the CoverEase mission… to be: Lighting Fast, Easy, and Awesome!

“I’m always asking myself; how can we be better at what we do and improve the customer experience to better serve our customers without removing the value of our knowledge and expertise?”

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