RHS 123 - Alex Bargmann on What It Takes to Innovate the E&S Market

The Ryan Hanley Show

PathPoint, the first open digital wholesale brokerage for the Excess & Surplus lines market in the insurance industry.

Some people find E&S boring and difficult. In this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley is joined by Alex Bargmann, CEO and co-founder of PathPoint. They discuss why this is no longer the case and why independent agents need to start taking notice of E&S business.

Don't miss this episode...

Episode Highlights:

• Alex discusses how he got into the insurance industry. (6:13)
• Alex mentions how it took him a long time to truly comprehend E&S underwriting and rating, and how the processes are significantly different. (10:51)
• Alex mentions that they have executive support for putting products or providing capacity to PathPoint in order to digitize the wholesale distribution platform. (17:48)
• Alex explains what he really likes about PathPoint. (21:54)
• What were the most glaring challenges Alex knew he had to address, either immediately or later, in establishing PathPoint? (23:21)
• How difficult was it to get E&S carriers to return digital quotes? (29:17)
• Alex explains that they are very specific about their appetite and making sure they are not just adding class codes for the sake of adding class codes. (39:17)
• Alex talks about the first carrier they worked with. (44:25)
• Alex and Ryan discuss agency billing and direct billing. (47:23)

Key Quotes:

• “One thing I really liked about PathPoint where we were able to sort of figure out our differentiators, is like we didn't have to deal with this notion of do we go direct? Or do we go through agents?” - Alex Bargman
• “I think there's some value in being able to digitally quote business” - Alex Bargman
• “The thing we were able to leverage is that we didn't actually have to convince them to automate underwriting because they had incidentally already done it by writing these binding authority guidelines.” - Alex Bargman

Resources Mentioned:

• Alex Bargmann LinkedIn
• PathPoint
• Reach out to Ryan Hanley

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