Michael Macauley, Founder and CEO of Quadrant Information Services, Speaks Exclusively to The Silicon Review: “With 30 Years of Experience, We have a Long and Rich History in the Industry and have Become an Engrained Part of Carriers’ Internal Processes”

“We are a standalone resource for Insurance Providers, the foundation of which is a stable of 20k+ rate sets, including auto, home, renter, condo and dwelling fire.”

Quadrant Information Services, a leading provider of enterprise-wide insurance solutions, offers fast and accurate information that powers competitive analysis, pricing analytics, rate-making, consumer experience, and content creation to drive SEO traffic.

The company is headquartered in Gallatin, TN.

In Conversation with Michael Macauley, Founder and CEO of Quadrant Information Services

Q. Brief us about the origin and evolution of your company.

I started the company in 1991 to serve as a retail point-of-sale system. Two years later, the need arose to compare companies via multiple quoting systems, and thus the first pricing analytics tool was born. I remain the company’s proud leader and CEO, continuing to develop new technologies and innovations to provide the insurance industry with the best, fastest, and most accurate pricing solutions available in the marketplace.

Today, we provide a full suite of Pricing Analytics solutions for the Property and Casualty Insurance industry. Quadrant is the standalone resource for P&C Insurance Providers that powers Competitive Pricing Analytics, Rate-Making, Consumer Experience, and Content Creation to drive SEO traffic. Our library consists of over 20,000 rate sets, supporting auto, homeowner, renter, condo, and dwelling fire. Our market inventory ranges from national, regional, preferred, and non-standard carriers and spans across all 50 states plus D.C.

Q. Quadrant is the foremost provider of the best enterprise-wide insurance solutions for property and casualty insurance. This sounds highly promising. How did this idea come to your mind? Was there any experience that led to the establishment of the company?

Carriers often look at a rate set’s competitiveness after it is released. This typically becomes a post-mortem analysis when the rates are not as competitive as expected. A pricing support analysis with Quadrant reduces the problem if used during the early stages of a rate adjustment. With Quadrant, carriers can address all these concerns; companies use our data to display competitive position concerning the pricing of the markets selected for analysis. This, in turn, enables them to determine where their company stands and what needs to change to drive improvement.

Additionally, Quadrant aims to provide content-publishers with real, accurate, and up-to-date data. With the insurance-industry growing increasingly complex, consumers typically know very little about their insurance policies, how to shop for a better premium, or even what they need to shop for. Therefore, it is up to customer-oriented companies and organizations to represent a more transparent depiction of the industry, and this transparency can only be achieved with reputable and accurate data from Quadrant.

Q. Let’s talk about hurdles. Were there any that you had to overcome during the initial years?

Personal lines pricing was a fairly sleepy business from the inception of the auto and homeowners lines of business until the late 1990s. Some innovations certainly refined what was being done, such as introducing driver classifications, territorial rating, and vehicle series rating. For the most part, companies did not regard pricing differentiation to gain the upper hand in the competitive world in which they lived. That all changed when the credit-related rating was introduced. The complex modeling that underlies each model can be the source of significant competitive advantage for a company or vendor. As a result of these models’ proprietary nature, a company can’t know what precisely another company does concerning its use of credit in its rating.

Quadrant has developed a proprietary methodology to align Credit and Tiering. We have developed several steps using price points and determining outliers to estimate price point distributions and, therefore, be able to get a theoretically sound alignment of carrier scores and tiers.

Q. For nearly 30 years, your company remains the industry’s most trusted resource and enjoys the liberties of being a closely-held, private company. How have you managed to lead from the front over the years?

Quadrant has one competitor in the industry, who offers their own version of a batch rating desktop tool. We otherwise remain a standalone resource, with a plethora of data services that are unique to the industry. In comparing our desktop tool to our single competitor, Quadrant maintains a higher level of accuracy through strong validation and QA processes including a proprietary method of credit and tier alignment. Additionally, our desktop tool includes access to custom quote conversion applications, custom report templates, historical data, and accurate risk scenarios with a shopper’s database of quotes, and Google Maps technology for data visualizations.

In addition to our desktop tool, Quadrant remains unmatched with our web-based tool InsureWatch that heighten the value of our data services, web-quoting capabilities for COM companies, and reporting services for data-driven content creation.

Given the insurance solutions sector is highly competitive, how uniquely do you address your customers’ pain points?

Accuracy: With hand rating quotes, checking rating rules, and verifying rates, factors, and equations, our team of programmers delivers the most accurate information available.

Answers: We avoid the downward spiral of increased ratios and lost costs by improving retention rates and increasing volume.

Results: We assess the marketplace to understand carriers’ competitiveness and trends across the industry.

Technology: Our data can be accessed via Web Services, COM objects, Software Suite, and SaaS.

Q. Where do you stand as a company in a crowd of competitors? And what are you doing to stay ahead of the curve?

With our team of insurance specialists and industry experts, Quadrant strives to stay on top of insurance trends and changes across the industry. We keep track of new and upcoming rating variables (Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, usage-based insurance, etc.) to ensure our clients receive the most cutting-edge and up-to-date data available. With 30 years of experience, we have a long and rich history in the industry and have become an engrained part of carriers’ internal processes.

Over the decades, we have also worked to build significant partnerships and joint ventures with others in the insurance space, from actuarial firms to COM startups to innovative data resources and more. These relationships enrich our offering and provide clients with a broader set of solutions and resources within the industry. We also communicate regularly with clients, vendors, and development staff to resolve and improve technological challenges to offer improvements and build new products.

Q. Briefly walk us through your plans. Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

As the industry grows more consumer-centric, Quadrant will continue to be the premier source of insurance data for content providers and consumer-facing sites. With our historical knowledge of how insurance carriers have changed their rates combined with data on their current rate structures, we can also provide insights into future rate changes and predict where the industry is headed.

Today, Quadrant data can be found across major news sources like US News and Forbes, and other industry bigwigs like Lending Tree, TheZebra.com, Nerdwallet, and Red Ventures. The future of Quadrant lies within our ability to provide any company—insurance-related or not—insurance data that promotes a more transparent and consumer-centric industry. We anticipate Quadrant (and insurance in general) to continue expanding outside the traditional space in which it has historically lived, to the point where consumers can find insurance insights and improved shopping experiences anywhere, from Google to Amazon to vehicle manufacturers, and beyond.

The Visionary Behind the Success of Quadrant Information Services

Michael Macauley is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Quadrant Information Services. He has an overall experience of 30 years in the industry which has earned him a position of widespread high-regard in the insurance space.

"We keep track of new and upcoming rating variables ranging from Internet of Things to autonomous vehicles to ensure our clients receive the most cutting-edge and up-to-date data available."