By James Thaler

June 6 - (The Insurer) - Newfront co-founder and chief technology officer Gordon Wintrob said the insurtech retail broker’s staff win more business when leveraging the firm’s in-house built technology, with an aim to close coverage gaps, while touting that it works with 20% of all U.S. “unicorn” firms.

Wintrob made those comments while speaking to The Insurer TV on the sidelines of last month’s Equal Ventures Insurance Capital Summit in New York City, where he outlined giving staff a selling advantage through tech and plans to establish for staff “agentic workflows.”

The San Francisco-based company was launched in 2017 with co-founder and CEO Spike Lipkin, and last publicly raised $200 million with backing from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, B Capital, Founders Fund and Meritech Capital that valued the firm at $2.2 billion.

“We took a very contrarian approach (when we launched), which was we believe that brokers are really important insurance professionals, and their relationships are really at the center of this industry,” Wintrob outlined.

“We thought about how we can build technology that super-charges or empowers them instead of trying to replace them. And that's really been consistent since we started the company through to today,” he noted.

The CTO said that the insurtech has been focused on building technology that helps its brokers sell and brings all the information needed to clients to “deliver a really great experience.”

“Our North Star is seeing how we help our brokers win more business. And we very consistently show that they generate more new business than our peers, and close deals at higher rates when they demo the product,” Wintrob argued.

He cited Newfront’s “coverage gap analysis” tool as an example that analyzes clients’ in-force policies to identify any gaps in coverage that he said allows Newfront brokers to approach prospects and analyze their existing programs to “identify what's wrong with it."

“Then we can essentially drive that wedge and help them show how we have a lot of data and expertise to help them make better decisions,” Wintrob explained.

The executive said that the tools Newfront arms its staff with are unusual in what he called “a very dusty industry.”

“(Professionals) tend to be on the older side, and there are a lot of folks at Newfront who come from some of those legacy players that are maybe a little bit more old school,” he commented.

“We always think of it as, ‘How do we meet our clients where they are?’ So, even if you're someone who's maybe not as tech savvy or a digital native, your clients probably are increasingly looking like that,” Wintrob explained.

“So we want to give (brokers) tools that help (them) better communicate with those clients, give them more transparency, more data driven insights, so it doesn't feel so old school for them.”

ONSHORING PROCESSES PREVIOUSLY OFFSHORED

Wintrob said Newfont has been heavily focused on leveraging AI and large language models to streamline and “supercharge” its internal workflows.

“Increasingly, it looks like, ‘Hey, are you just dragging in the document?’ and the system can go off and take action,” he noted.

“Maybe that's sending an email to an underwriter, maybe it's generating a report, maybe it's logging several pieces of data. The person can just sit back and let the platform take care of it,” Wintrob added.

The CTO also echoed recent comments from CRC Group’s Garret Koehn that AI tools mean that firms such as Newfront can accomplish tasks that were previously offshored more efficiently and cost effectively.

“There's some very obvious benefits in terms of the back office, where you think about things where previously maybe we'd send something to a BPO (business process outsourcer), where now we can take over that workflow,” Wintrob said, citing loss runs as an example.

“Previously, we had a very manual process using a BPO, and we cut the cost of that workflow by about 60% by implementing (large language models),” he continued.

“Where I'm more excited, though, is more of the client-facing functionality and driving new business. So, if we can show that we're growing a lot faster thanks to AI, that's really having an impact on the bottom line in a way that people can really rally around versus just cost-cutting,” he concluded.

Watch the full interview with Newfront’s Gordon Wintrob to hear more on:

• How Newfront’s brokers are winning more business by leveraging tech tools

• The use of AI and large language models to “supercharge” internal workflows and onshore certain tasks

• The insurtech’s use of technology to deliver more complete submissions to carriers

• And more...