Serving Up Success: How MGAs Can Balance Specialization with Growth

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Unbind with Bindable. I'm um, Bill Sonnison, CEO and co founder of Bindable and I'm excited to host today's episode alongside our guest Bobby Turan. Bobby is the CEO and founder of Rainbow, a tech enabled MGA offering specialty insurance programs for commercial lines. Rainbow's restaurant program was launched in 2021 at a time when the restaurant industry was navigating unprecedented challenges in the wake of the pandemic. Since then Bobby and his team have expanded beyond food service into the beauty and wellness sector, using technology and agent driven distribution models to reshape how insurance is delivered. By leveraging continuous underwriting, Rainbow is creating a smarter, more dynamic approach to risk management. Today we'll dive into Bobby's journey in insurance, what led him to create Rainbow, and how the company is using technology, data and agent partnerships to drive innovation. Bobby, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me Bill. Happy to be here.

Speaker A: Great, great to have you. Um, let's start by just having you introduce yourself a little bit, tell us about your background, how you got started in insurance and then if you could provide an overview of a Rainbow, that'd be great.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, grew up outside of Boston in a small town called Westwood, Massachusetts and was uh, always interested in being a business owner from a young age. Studied, uh, economics and finance in college and then after college, uh, very quickly got involved with um, different kinds of startups. Ones that I'd started myself, ones that I was a member of. Um, sort of a common theme was this is like going back 2008, 9, 10, when I was really getting going with a lot of this stuff. More and more companies were being built on the Internet. And uh, that was really interesting to me. And um, through a number of twists and turns in my career about eight years ago I found the world of specialty insurance. I actually moved to the San Francisco Bay area, which is where I'm based now with my family, and started a company that focused on the surplus lines market and using software to kind of make that market operate more efficiently. And um, really just fell in love with insurance and all the different moving parts. Uh, really didn't know anything about it before that. And so I think the unknown was always kind of initially alluring to me. And then where I've been in other net new industries and that that allure kind of starts to fade after a while. That didn't happen with insurance. I just found myself more and more in love with it. And, and so yeah, started rainbow in uh, 2020 um, uh, two. Um, and uh, so we just crossed our three year anniversary and uh, having a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Congratulations. Congrats. And at a high level, what is, you know, what does Rainbow do?

Speaker B: So Rainbow is a program administrator. We develop uh, our own proprietary insurance programs that are specialized to particular industries and then we distribute those programs through our online platform that our team builds and maintains. And the primary users on the other side of the platform are insurance agents. And uh, so when we started the company, we wanted the very first industry that we went after to be restaurants. And we can talk a little bit about why restaurants. And um, so we developed our first program which is for restaurants and it's an admitted program. Then we started underwriting that in the middle of 2023. So we haven't even hit two years really of underwriting that. Um, and then towards the end of last year, just before New Year's, we launched our second program which is focused on beauty and wellness. So we ensure, uh, salons on the beauty side and of various kinds, and then fitness studios on the wellness side and uh, yeah, growing a portfolio, being very thoughtful about underwriting and uh, trying to use software at every step of the way.

Speaker A: That's a great story. It's great for a Boston guy to, and uh, an entrepreneur to say that he loves insurance. Uh, uh, it is one of those industries. I always say all roads lead to insurance. And smart entrepreneurial guys like you, uh, are really helping uh, the industry. So it uh, is interesting that you launched the business, you know, what, 2021, 2022, and you started with insurance with restaurants. Um, and obviously uh, really, really tough time for restaurants. The pandemic. Um, what was kind of the motivation when you launched this mga? Because you could have really focused on any industry, any sector. Um, this was a pivotal moment for restaurants. What was the thinking behind restaurants to start?

Speaker B: Well, I think you touched on one of them, uh, or on a couple of the points that made it sort of attractive to us. One was that restaurants were struggling. And one of the things I've always loved about insurance is that it's a financial service that provides benefit. You know, it's a good thing for society for businesses to have insurance. And uh, it was frankly heartbreaking to me because I love restaurants, uh, I love to eat. And uh, it was it. And most restaurants really all restaurants for one reason or another, need to have insurance. Um, so it's critical for their business. And uh, it was just like difficult to see that it had become so challenging for them to get this essential Coverage that they needed to run their business because of all the changes that had happened, which were like completely unprecedented, like the pandemic. Um, it's also just a very large industry. And so from an impact perspective, it was attractive to us. We felt like if we could even make a little bit of a dent in the way that restaurants are insured, that would be pretty meaningful. And uh, so that was exciting to us. So it felt like a good starting point for like learning about ways that we can create value for the business owner community. Uh, and then also agents, um, you know, to take a step back and talk maybe a little bit more about our, our thoughts at Rainbow. The things that we want to do to differentiate our business kind of include a few different pieces. So number one, we're just big believers in underwriting as the core of what we deliver. So that manifests itself in the software that we build. Like you talk about continuous underwriting software. It manifests itself in the way that we've grown our organization. Um, so a little less than a third of our company are underwriters. And so unlike some technology enabled underwriting companies that from my perspective, kind of take this binary decision on, it's either going to include humans only or software only. We wanted to sort of take this middle ground, which was why can't you use software for the pieces that are more automatable and use humans for those important judgment calls? Um, so that specialization was like a critical part of what we wanted to do. And uh, we've been trying to sort of like live that value. Uh, and the other thing was sort of like the important role that agents play in the transaction process. Um, we see agents as in fact an important form of underwriting. They are our eyes and ears in the field. One of the things that I love working about, uh, one of the things I love about working with independent agents is that you have these individuals who generally speaking are so in touch with their local communities and their businesses, they play such an important role. And the example I always give is that when a restaurant in a community goes out of business, typically the next business that opens in that place is also a restaurant because of the way the building's been sort of retrofitted or whatever. And it's not uncommon for the same agent to keep insuring, uh, those businesses. And so they just have a very good understanding of like, who are the local contractors that do these adjustments. How does that factor into how risky the business is? Did, uh, the previous business not succeed for something that was in the business owner's control or not in the business owner's control. And these are details that I think software still has a long way to go in terms of being able to make those decisions. It's just way more efficient these days to work with knowledgeable humans. And then similarly, last thing I'll say is that the agents really appreciate that they have human underwriters at Rainbow that they can talk to. So it's not just I, ah, make a submission. It's either a quote or a decline. Um, there's a lot of gray area that we're willing to consider and I think that agents generally find that to be really attractive.

Speaker A: Yeah, Ben. And, and it's interesting because um, the restaurant owners or proprietors, uh, they trust agents. Right? So they, you know, most m, restaurant owners don't have the time to think about all the different insurance coverages they need. And I want to delve back into the, into the um, the agent distribution model here in a second. But in terms of just coverage, when you launched this product and basically essentially created your own product, um, did you, were there any gaps in coverage that you found that weren't out there or did you mirror sort of any, the standard restaurant products? Did you create any kind of, did you say, hey, most restaurant owners don't realize, um, they don't have this, or they could benefit from this enhancement or this endorsement. And, and certainly if anyone can identify that, it's agents. So the success you've had with agent distribution tells me that there may have been something unique about your product that they liked. Is there anything, is there anything that you built into your product that would be useful specifically for restaurants that they may not be able to get elsewhere?

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, so a couple of things on that. First of all, as I'd mentioned, uh, well, I mentioned that the program is admitted, but just to give a little context on why we felt it has to be admitted is we just felt like, and we were hearing from agents that the largest addressable component of the market was going to be addressable with an admitted product. You had a lot of restaurant owners that, especially immediately after the pandemic, depending on when their renewals were, had to go on to a non admitted policy because carriers were immediately pulling back from places like restaurants in particular. And uh, several years had passed since the pandemic and restaurants uh, were, were sort of wanting to go back to having an admitted policy and not having to sort of manage the pieces that come with having non admitted coverage. So we knew we wanted it to be admitted and we knew that that meant that once we file with the different regulators in the states where we operate, we weren't going to have a lot of. We weren't going to have like, endless flexibility. And so to your point, we had to be really thoughtful about like upfront. What did we do, uh, in terms of the pieces of coverage? We looked at who were the best performing, um, markets in, uh, in the ecosystem. And that depended on where in the country you were. You are. We currently Write business in 30 states, um, including large states like California, like Texas and my home state Massachusetts. And um, if you look in Massachusetts, you have very different active insurers of restaurants than you'll have in Texas, than you'll have in the Midwest, and you'll have in California. So it was a pretty comprehensive effort. Um, and I would say that the biggest gap was that in a lot of these different territories, you just had a lot of carriers that were very actively pulling back on their appetite. And so they just weren't really entertaining restaurants at all necessarily. Um, and so by having a product that our core product is a, is a business owner's policy, it's a bop. Yep. And, you know, having coverage available for like, incidental delivery, like an hnoa, coverage critical, um, having high appetite for liquor liability was one that I felt like was a gap. So we can write businesses with up to 65% alcohol, which is quite a bit more than the average admitted, uh, market. And what's really interesting about that is because due to inflation, you have a lot of restaurants who um, are charging more for alcoholic beverages. So whereas a, uh, margarita at a Mexican restaurant may have cost $12 before, now they might be charging 20 bucks for a margarita. So the percentage of sales going to alcohol has increased, but it doesn't necessarily mean that more alcohol is being served. It doesn't necessarily mean that that establishment is more risky. But because of the guidelines of these larger carriers, and again, this is all admitted, so all of us don't have a tremendous amount of flexibility. Certain carriers were just sort of like, uh, conflicted out, depending on their own appetite. Um, and then we also. I would say the other thing that we do with our policy that we hear from agents is really appreciate is that the policy is very customizable in terms of what is included. So if you want to include equipment breakdown, if you want to include cyber liability, if you want epli, um, all of these are things that you, as the agent can add to your coverage within the portal and which you can have a dialogue with your underwriter about your Rainbow underwriter, if you have sort of like a special case, uh, for a risk that you're looking to insure. So those are some of the things that I would kind of point to.

Speaker A: Ah, and it sounds like you've gotten really good at it. And um, restaurants, uh, are a tough risk. Right. And I think, you know, carriers are very uh, finicky and I'm sure, and we'll talk a little bit about how your technology works. Um, but you've now stepped a little bit out of restaurants and you've, you've uh, you've expanded into beauty and wellness. Um, I'm sure you looked at a lot of other verticals. Uh, why beauty and wellness and how's it going?

Speaker B: So Beauty and Wellness, we felt was another one of those classes that was increasingly seeing more of the business go into the ENS world. And um, in some cases it's because those businesses as a way to either grow their business or for some other reason had started to offer services that made most admitted carriers less comfortable. Um, and so we try to, because we have the combination of the software which we'll talk about, plus the humans, I think we were able to say, like within that area of risks that are increasingly a little bit more in the gray area, there's like a sweet spot that we think that we can be the best market for and we can give agents the best experience. Um, and so that's one of the things, one of the reasons we wanted to go after, we want to go after markets where we feel like our capabilities give us a competitive advantage so that we can ultimately provide a better product into the marketplace. Um, so that's one of the things I would say in general, we also just like Main street commercial business, um, there, there are similarities actually between restaurant risks. Like these businesses are typically tenant based exposures. Um, a lot of the liability claims are actually uh, not that different. Um, you typically don't have alcohol being served at salons, uh, or not enough to I guess to be a concern. Um, but uh, but in general those were some of the, some of the reasons that we were interested in it. And uh, I think it's going well so far. So we're only live with Beauty and wellness in two states. Again because it's admitted, it's sort of, it depends on the pace at which our filings get approved. We're live in Arizona and Michigan, um, and we have agents in both of those states submitting business to us and we're getting going with our first policies on the books. Uh, just over the last couple of weeks.

Speaker A: Oh, fantastic. I have to tell you, it's really refreshing to hear how independent agent centric your business is. And I think that, um, it's, it's refreshing because a lot of insurtechs, as you know, started and they thought they would replace independent agents or they didn't need independent agents. And uh, agents have never been stronger. Right. And, and the role play is, is, has never been stronger. Um, you know, there's, I think kind of one of the key advantages I would think, is just the fact that independent agents are knowledgeable and they are, um, and they're from an underwriting, from a personal underwriting perspective. Um, they, they understand what you're trying to do and they can help their clients, I guess. Um, what are some of the other key advantages when you think about, um, independent agents? And how does going exclusively through that channel impact your growth? Has it been helping? Is it, uh, not helping? I mean, how do you think about that?

Speaker B: Well, just to answer them in reverse, I think that partnering with the independent agent channel and also just being very clear that that is the channel that we're committed to now and for the long term has been critical to our growth. It has been nothing but helpful for our growth. Um, not only because, to your point, independent agents are very well positioned and control a lot of business in the market, new and renewal business, but also because our agents are often our greatest source of learning and improvement. Most of our agents, if you ask them, hey, what could we do differently? Um, many of them are comfortable telling you what they wish we were doing differently. And we totally get that. A lot of agents are super busy and they don't have time to provide us with that feedback. But we're kind of always looking for it, we're always asking for it. Uh, and it's really powerful when an agent, when anyone, but in our case an agent gives you feedback on a product and then you are able to actually make that change rather than just sort of putting it on a list somewhere. That really drives a huge amount of trust with our agents because they see that they're heard. Um, and so that's really exciting to us. Um, the thing that was sort of very attractive to us about independent agents was kind of two things. One, I think to your point, I'd observed a number of other. My previous company actually also distributed through retail agents. There was never a direct to consumer component of that. And so I felt very comfortable with, uh, the sort of like the mindset of an agent and what motivates Them. Um, but I've just seen like most of the companies that had the insuretext that had tried to cut out the agent had either not been successful or had, had been unsuccessful but had enough Runway to say, okay, we're not doing that anymore. Now we're only going to go through agents. We just sort of had the benefit of starting later than some of those companies and uh, could learn from what clearly wasn't as successful for them. But the other thing is that kind of to the point I was making about how highly we value specialization

Speaker A: both,

Speaker B: um, in terms of the underwriters on our team, which all come from commercial lines backgrounds, many of whom have direct experience writing the hospitality class, um, and the software that we build to support highly specialized data sets, which again, I know I keep saying this we'll talk about. Agents themselves are also highly specialized and they make it their business to like I was saying, really know the community, know the operators. You know, they. It's like the expression you underwrite the person more than you do the business. Um, in our, in our underwriting view, it's so important, um, to be underwriting businesses that have experienced management. For example, like we will write new ventures and that's one of our competitive advantages. But we need to see a track record of expertise in the management m. And so we place a lot of value on that and it's. We can find some of that stuff out online but really the. That is an example of somewhere where we really depend on the agent's understanding of that individual when they're sitting across from them, um, from the owner and getting a feel for the, from the management of, of how well run that business is going to sort of ultimately prove to be.

Speaker A: Yep. That's fantastic. I mean it's um. Uh, I was, I may have told you early in my career I was in the commercial insurance space and it was um. Restaurants are tough, right? I mean some of them can be a challenge. Some of them, uh, the carriers are in and out of the market and um, it's finding the right ones. So, um, just as it relates to distribution given uh, bindables, our platform is focused, as you know, on sponsored distribution, affinity distribution. Have you ever considered any kind of endorsed distribution, maybe trade groups or, or associations of restaurant groups or um, franchises or any kind of broader, uh, endorsed distribution, uh, with independent agents included?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. So we were probably uh, a couple weeks into going live in Texas, which was the second state that we went live with, went live in with our restaurant program. We went live in Arizona first, and then we went live in Texas, and I had an opportunity to, uh, travel to Dallas for the Texas Restaurant Association's uh, annual meeting and convention, which was a ton of fun. Uh, I've been to conventions and, you know, industry meetings for lots of different industries. I've been a sort of a, uh, for better or worse, I've, I've. I've operated in a lot of different industries that have nothing to do with each other. And I would always go to these trade events because I think they're super valuable. The restaurant events were by far the best ones I'd ever been to. Every single stand as like, oh, I'm a sausage vendor and I'm like, grilling up sausages. You can try. Or I'm a tequila company. Do you want to try some tequila? Everyone's just in a good mood. Walking around. You're learning all this really interesting stuff. And, um, I thought it was great. It was like the heartbeat of the industry. And like you said, I think what we would really love to do for the affinity channel is just in those different channels, find the designated agent. Because typically, in our experience, there's like, a preferred agent that works directly with a lot of the membership, um, and sort of foster those relationships so that we can become, uh, like a restaurant market of choice for them. Um, we think we're well, very well equipped from, like, an insurance product and an insurance experience perspective to be doing that. Um, I think it's frankly just been a, uh, not enough hours in the day thing thus far in terms of pursuing that channel, but definitely something we're interested in.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. And maybe it'll be one of your agents that'll develop it for you. Right. Um, there are a lot of brokers and agents around the country that have done endorsed programs for all kinds of products, restaurants and franchises and all kinds of other verticals. So, um, the endorsement does help. Right? And it could help, uh, agents, uh, close business. Um, can we move over to your technology? I know we've referred to it a couple of times, and you've built your own platform, um, to really uniquely meet the needs of everyone in the value chain. Uh, can you share more about what makes your platform stand out?

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So,

Speaker B: uh, I have two co founders in this business. One is our head of technology and one is our head of product. And when I say product, I mean product in the technology sense. Um, and so. And my background is also sort of being on the business side of. Of software companies prior to finding insurance as sort of like My sweet spot. So the founding DNA of the team is very geared towards thinking about solving problems with software. So that's the first thing I'll say. We've sort of complemented that with really strong insurance leadership, um, with folks that have deep experience launching MGAs, operating MGAs, being an underwriter or a service member at an MGA. And I think that's really like our secret sauce is the combination of Those two, those two sort of backgrounds. We have a almost 10 person engineering team, software engineering team based here in San Francisco. It's the only team that at the company that is sort of has a hybrid work, uh, style. So the engineers come into the uh, in an office that we have at a wework in San Francisco twice a week. And we find that that's really important. We're just all big believers that software is really a, you know, it's a team sport. And developing software and building new systems is always easier when you have people you can talk to and bounce ideas off of. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to build our quote bind, rating underwriting and policy issuance systems all from the ground up. And we wanted to build them all ourselves. And this is both just sort of like the intellectual challenge of wanting to do that, but also we just believed that we didn't really find a solution in the market that we felt could do all of those things super well the way we wanted to do it. And we also didn't really want to be in a situation where we have many different vendors that we have to use for like critical components of our business. We felt like it was worth taking the risk to build that ourselves. And sort of the upshot of that is that now we have a ton of control over the entire experience that an agent has and that our underwriters have because we built a whole underwriting workbench. And um, it also means that we can launch new products and new states super quickly. So as a data point for you, when a new state, when a state's DOI approves our filing, that state can be live for quoting and binding with agents in that state within 24 hours, a lot of times within the same day. And um, that would not, that would just not be possible if we were using some kind of a third party um, mosaic of tools. So the one of the things that really differentiates us is that you're not going to get this digital experience anywhere else. And we know that because we built this system ourselves and we don't license our system to other people. That is like A lot of like what the agents experience with and there's a number of other things I could say about like we like to think that we have a fairly thoughtful questionnaire that we ask. So like if you answer a question that then has like a corresponding question, we just present that to you right there. If you answer a question that no matter what is going to lead to the risk being declined because of something eligibility related, we will just stop you in your tracks. We don't make you fill out the whole thing and then realize that your answer to question number two would have led to a decline. Because we want to be mindful of agents time. Right. So we've done a lot of sort of experience things. We've also built a whole underwriter workbench. So when a submission triggers a referral for any reason and one of our human underwriters pulls it down and starts to work on it, they get a full view of the risk, who the agent is that submitted it, what caused the trigger. And and then we also show our underwriters what information did our continuous underwriting find online that helps with the evaluation of the risk. And that's like really important from an underwriter efficiency perspective.

Speaker A: And are using that, I'm sorry, using third party.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are. And that's really like what's at the core of continuous underwriting. And that's what I was going to say is the third thing about kind of what makes it unique. So basically when a submission starts to come into the system as the agent is entering information about the risk, our software is in the background checking third party data from Yelp and Google Business and Google Reviews and the website of the restaurant itself to verify or gather additional information such as hours of operation or things like that. We use that to feel really confident in the way the business is being classified. Misclassification in small commercial is a huge source of premium leakage. You know, just as an example, if a business is classified as casual dining, limited cooking versus casual dining, full cooking, that can be like more than a 50% swing in the premium. And so it's really important for us as we think about profitability and of course being on risk for things that are truly representative of the risk that things are correctly classified. There's a whole world of companies that are trying to solve that problem. So, so we try to address that upfront and then once the risk is on our books, we continue to basically like re underwrite those risks on an ongoing basis every single day. The software does that in the background. So it doesn't require even intervention. So then if the restaurant's hours of operation change, if the, uh, something about their eligibility changes, like they are opening a bar that's adjacent to it or something like that, or they have live entertainment every night of the week, whatever it might be. We're not reliant on the insured bringing us that information because we know they're very busy running their business. We're not dependent on the agent necessarily bring us that business because we know they're busy. But it gives us, and ultimately our reinsurance providers, comfort that we're constantly, uh, increasing our confidence level in what the risk is. And anytime we see something that triggers, uh, some kind of a flag for our team, we always only correspond with the agent and we make them aware. We never go directly to the insured and we say, excuse me, agent, like we're seeing some things that have changed. Is it possible that there's a mistake? Or is there something else we need to know about the risk? And in every situation that I can think of where that's happened, the agents are always appreciative of the fact that we bring these things to their attention. Um, so those are some of the details about our software. Of course, I could go into a lot more detail on any part of that that you'd like to know now.

Speaker A: That's great.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: So you jumped. I guess it sort of jumped ahead to my next question, which is really about continuous underwriting. Is that really what you consider continuous underwriting? Is that for those who may not be familiar with it, can you just kind of help define it? It sounds like that's what you're doing. You're always. You're using data, you're using, uh, technology to see if things have changed along the way in real time. Is that how you think about continuous underwriting? If not, you know, how would you define it?

Speaker B: Well, so when we were first talking to capacity providers, and as a program administrator, let me just say, and as an. As an mga, we, uh, are. Business requires reinsurance capacity. That's like oxygen for our business. We can't operate without that. So like it or not, we have to make a lot of decisions, critical business decisions, based on what the capacity providers tell us. And actually we really like that because generally those capacity providers have a lot of experience that can help us avoid, um, mistakes that are like, unforced errors, basically. And what we heard from even the biggest reinsurance companies in the world were that they would actually love to be writing more restaurants. They recognize that It's a tough class, but it's big. And like I said, it's necessary. They'd love to write more. Their biggest insecurity about it was they were like, we never really know what the true nature of the operations are, and we don't have a cost efficient and scalable way to be monitoring that. And we, and we can't really police the people to whom we delegate authority, like MGAs, uh, on how to do that. Um, and so a lot of these, A lot of restaurant policies are not necessarily even audited when they come up for renewal. Um, and we felt like as we were hearing that, we're like, huh, huh. So then when there's this bad performance, this adverse development in the book, and then the only thing a carrier capacity provider can do is sort of get off risk, how could we think about, like, thinking about that stuff differently? And so, um, that was sort of like the genesis behind this idea of continuous underwriting. We wanted to find a way to monitor the businesses with. Monitor the business without being intrusive to the business owners without being intrusive to the agent, because we know they're both very busy. Uh, but ultimately, in a way that gave us and our capacity providers increased confidence, like I keep saying, about what are we actually on risk for? And, um, we sort of started calling it continuous underwriting. And we've done a bunch of written pieces about that and kind of like why that's important to us. And, uh. And yeah, so that's the, that's the background on, uh, on continuous underwriting.

Speaker A: And do you think you'll continue to, um, no pun intended, uh, use the same approach as with Health and Wellness and other. Other verticals? Is that, is that the point? Plan to really maximize the use of your technology, um, for, I mean, obviously much different underwriting considerations for a barber shop than a, than a, than a clam shop. But, um, what do you. Do you think you're going to use the same concept and the same thinking and the same technology to do it in other verticals?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, one thing that I would say too, that I didn't mention is that the continuous underwriting. It's our belief that the continuous underwriting ultimately helps our human underwriters be more effective at their jobs. So again, the software is just going to flag, hey, I saw something that seems inconsistent. And then the underwriter is going to be able to go in and look at that very specific thing and say, like, oh, you're right, software. This is not correct. Or, uh, or there's not consistent or oh, like there's just a mistake here. So like, we don't have to, we don't have to act on it. So there is still that level of human judgment which we think is really critical. But yes, we absolutely plan to use it in other categories where it makes sense. So to give you an example on the beauty and wellness side, uh, again what we heard from capacity providers was we love nail salons, we'd love to write them all. But now increasingly you'll have nail salons that on the weekends offer, uh, lip injections, lip fillers or Botox. And anytime you have a needle going into someone's skin, you generally have reinsurers that are going to feel a little bit less comfortable than if there's just paint going on their fingernails. And so they're like, you know, how do we, how do we filter uh, out those that have these exposures that are ineligible from those that are eligible? Um, and so that's an area where we would think about, okay, how can continuous underwriting help us at scale, think about, um, getting as many of those good risks that we want. Good because they're a fit for our appetite and avoid those that are not going to be a fit for us for some reason. Just as one example.

Speaker A: Got it, got it. And as you think about, um, you mentioned you've got EPL and cyber in your BoP. Have you thought about other products to continue to grow those customer relationships? I mean workers comp, commercial auto, special liability, other things that, that your clients, as you, as you've built your reputation, uh, with these independent agents and subsequently with, with, with the channel, with the restaurants and, and uh, beauty and Wellness clients, have you thought about building other products that they might need, um, that, that their agents can bring to them? Uh, as you build this data and these, this history and um, you understand these, these restaurants more, you may want to take a chance on their workers comp. You might want to look at their, their delivery vehicles, things like that. Have you thought about anything like that?

Speaker B: Absolutely. We think about everything you just said. With both the restaurant program and Beauty and Wellness, we offer excess liability.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So that's a separate product that they can purchase from us. With Beauty and Wellness, we also offer professional liability, uh, because that's an important coverage for that class. Um, and we have spent a lot of time talking about workers comp, which is a critical coverage. Same with Commercial Auto. Uh, I would say that we haven't gotten all the where, all the way there yet on those two, uh, types of coverage for different reasons. Um, you know, somewhat based on demand, somewhat based on like what do we think is going to be an attractive segment for us to go after. But then again it comes back to like what are, what are classes of coverage that beyond their sort of being for which there is a need, uh, what are the classes that we think that we can have a competitive advantage in that we can give agents a better experience on? Because we know that agents, all agents that write commercial business are going to have their work comp markets, they're going to have somebody they can go to for auto. Somebody not always easy these days. But um, you know increasingly we've thought a lot about as just to talk a little bit about expansion other classes of business that we want to go into. But we've also thought about ENS products that would allow us more rate inform flexibility for risks that are a no for our admitted appetite, but that could be a maybe for ens. Um, and that would again just give agents more optionality from a single point of submission. Um, and hopefully you know, save them the effort of having to leave our system, um, go to their wholesaler, work with the wholesaler to place the business across other markets. Um, and again just sort of like streamline whatever it is that they're doing while allowing us to offer more coverage for uh, more insureds.

Speaker A: One of the great things about going through the independent agent channel versus direct. If you were riding the bop directly with a restaurant, um, you'd always be worried that they're going to leave with whoever does their workers comp or whoever does their commercial auto. Well in most cases it's that agent that has the commercial auto and the, and the workers comp anyway so they are buying it all from one company and their agent has provided them the best in class bop and probably the best in class comp or commercial auto wherever they've gone to. And, and I guess um, and as you just said it, I mean you're thinking about maybe broadening and using ens. I mean uh, and I know you just launched the health and Wellness but any other products you know that you think are, that you're going to be thinking about in the short term or in the long term that you'd like

Speaker B: to share, uh, vertical. Well I would say, yeah, I would say that we, we continue to feel uh, like there's a lot of opportunity around what I'll call like main street classes of commercial business. Um, as our portfolio starts to evolve of different programs I do start to think about coverages that relative to something like restaurants or salons, might be a little bit more esoteric feeling. But the things that I have to think about are like, okay, is everything in our book longer tail or are there any shorter tail exposures that we can use to sort of balance the performance? Is every class of or every vertical that we go after, is there a strong correlation between them so that if something bad happens, something unforeseen happens, like the pandemic again, is that going to wipe out like all activity? Uh, what are the products that we use to sort of complement? Um, they don't necessarily have to become as big as the restaurant book might be because restaurants are such a massive part of the economy. Um, but as long as they're, well underwritten and they're profitable and it provides value for our agents, it's attractive to us. And again, I think we're in the fortunate position to be able to think about product and program expansion because we have invested for several years now into building this engine which is our technology platform and the people that sort of work around it. The sales team that sort of engages and brings in agents, the service team that makes sure that every agent gets sort of this white glove experience beyond the digital platform, and then the underwriting team of course, which is evaluating the risks. We think that that sort of three pronged approach plus the digital system scales really nicely to frankly most classes of commercial business. So sky's the limit in terms of where we can go from here.

Speaker A: Terrific. Well, Bobby, congratulations. It sounds like you're building a great business. Um, before we wrap up, any, anything else you'd like to share, any other insights as to where the industry is going or your business or anything you'd like to share?

Speaker B: Um, predictions? I am, yeah, predictions that I'm just like every day more and more encouraged by what's happening in the insurance industry. I mean, like, I genuinely mean that. Um, you know, I think I've been in the industry, like I said, for about eight years now, um, and sort of experienced, uh, a hard market and I've experienced a little bit of a softer market. I've experienced sort of like this secular shift towards the ENS industry. Um, I think the pandemic had a lot to do with sort of accelerating that. Um, I just think it's an incredibly exciting time to be in specialty insurance in particular, which is kind of how I think about our business because it's both specialized and it's sort of, uh, well, it's specialized and uh, I just think it's a great time to be building. And, uh. Um, yeah, I think there's. That's where a lot of the talent wants to be. I think that's where a lot of the growth in insurance is going to come from. And I'm just optimistic that we're going to see more and more software used across the industry, and I think that that's net positive for everyone.

Speaker A: We agree, 100%. Uh, Bobby Turan, Rainbow. Congratulations, and thanks very much for spending some time with us today.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Bill.