Business News: Pie, Mitchell International, Partner Re

June 11, 2018

Pie Insurance Launches Workers’ Comp Coverage for Small Businesses in 7 States

Pie Insurance announced it has begun selling workers’ compensation insurance policies online, directly to small businesses in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. Small business owners in these states can now enjoy the convenience of online shopping for workers’ comp insurance while gaining the savings passed on through a more efficient insurance model.

Workers’ compensation insurance is required by any company with full-time W-2 employees in every state other than Texas, limiting the incentive for insurers to improve the customer experience or remove friction from the buying cycle.

Pie addresses a significant pain point for small business owners who have often faced what can be a time-consuming and opaque process to purchase workers’ comp insurance. Traditionally, insurance agents work through a variety of carriers to receive quotes and provide them to small business owners for consideration. This experience can be jarring for small business owners who have grown accustomed to transacting online, especially Gen Xers and Millennials who will comprise 60 percent of SMB ownership by 2020.

As a technology-enabled insurance company, Pie leverages extensive, high-quality datasets to algorithmically segment and price small business policies, accurately assessing risks and passing along savings to small business owners. Already, thousands of small businesses have used Pie’s online quoting engine, with users often seeing savings of over $1,000 per year.

Pie’s leadership team is led by Co-founder and CEO John Swigart, who has a long history of success in tech-enabled insurance and financial services businesses. Prior to founding Pie, John served on the Esurance executive team for 13 years where he initially led all the financial functions and then became the company’s first chief marketing officer. John and his senior team bring to Pie over 50 years of insurance industry experience.

Insurance offered by Pie is supported by Sirius Group, which has earned an A rating from A.M Best. In aggregate, Pie’s seven launched states represent more than 12 million employed in small businesses, according to the U.S. Small Business Association.1

For more information, visit www.pieinsurance.com.

Mitchell International Acquires Medical Consultants Network

Mitchell International, a provider of technology, connectivity and information solutions to the property/Casualty insurance and collision repair industries, announced it’s completed acquisition of Medical Consultants Network (MCN) – one of the nation’s largest providers of independent medical exam services in the United States.

With the close of the transaction, Mitchell will now have the opportunity to integrate its bill review systems with a national independent medical exam (IME) provider, to improve the end-user experience and simplify the IME and peer review process for claims professionals. The combined Mitchell and MCN solutions will leverage extensive claims datasets and analytics to develop innovative decision support and risk scores to aid in the identification of claims in which an IME or peer review may be appropriate.

This strategic acquisition will give Mitchell and its customers access to an extensive national panel and network of providers – nearly 13,000 physicians with over 17,800 provider specialty-jurisdiction combinations to perform IMEs and additional review services for the auto and workers’ compensation industries, adding expertise to support Mitchell’s customer base of employers, insurance companies, state funds, third party administrators and managed care organizations.

The combined offering is expected to reduce the claims professional’s administrative burden in transmitting IME and physician peer review referrals, as well as incorporate claim decisions into the bill adjudication process for improved compliance and enforcement. Additionally, Mitchell plans to leverage its clinical expertise to help claims professionals identify what important medical review issues to address in the examination process.

The acquisition of MCN is Mitchell’s latest strategic investment in its commitment to creating better outcomes for customers, while building upon its existing industry-leading casualty claims expertise.

PartnerRe Acquires Claim Analytics Assets

PartnerRe Ltd. announced the acquisition of the assets of Claim Analytics, a Canadian based provider of predictive analytics solutions to the insurance industry.

Since its formation in 2001, Claim Analytics has provided predictive modeling solutions to the insurance industry in North America. The company is uniquely positioned in that it has successfully combined experienced actuaries with experts in data analytics to deliver innovative predictive solutions.

The Claim Analytics employees will join PartnerRe’s existing analytics team, will remain located in Toronto, Canada and will continue to do business as PartnerRe Analytics.