As Hourly’s Chief Underwriting Officer, I’m delighted to share that we're launching a new program with Nationwide.
We’ll be serving as Managing General Underwriter (MGU) to Nationwide. That means we’ll use our revolutionary technology to underwrite workers’ comp policies for even more businesses with hourly and mobile workers, which is our specialty.
Businesses in construction, landscaping, painting, companion care and other skilled trades will get access to a cutting-edge payroll and workers’ comp platform that will save them from getting hit by a huge audit bill at the end of every year.
We’ve worked steadily for the past year to find the right strategic partner for this program, and Nationwide is the perfect fit. They’re a Fortune 100 company that’s rated A+ Superior by AM Best and Standard & Poor’s, and they insure over half a million small businesses across the country.
They believe in our technology and its potential to revolutionize the workers’ comp industry. What’s more, they have a strong reputation for doing great work, which will help us form new connections across the U.S.
Curious what else this collaboration means? Let’s go into some more details.
Underwriting Policies with Revolutionary Technology
We’ll use our fully-integrated payroll and workers’ comp platform to collect millions of real-time data points–like when workers clock in or out and where, how much they’re getting paid, whether a workforce is growing or shrinking, what accidents have happened, and so on.
Then we’ll price and re-price policies based on a business’s real-time data. Meanwhile, Nationwide will review those workers’ comp policies and manage the claims as well.
Reaching Those Hard-to-Place Businesses
In the past, businesses with hourly and mobile workforces were hard to insure. Their employees constantly move from one job site to the next and projects come and go pretty frequently. This lack of predictability made it challenging for insurers to price policies correctly.
So, they simply wouldn’t offer workers’ comp or, if they did, would charge a pretty hefty premium to account for the risks they couldn’t gauge.
Now, we can spot those risky businesses immediately, and adjust premiums accordingly.
For example, if a landscaping business lands a new contract and needs to bulk up their workforce immediately, we’ll see that reflected on their payroll. They won’t even need to get in touch with us. Their workers’ comp rates will simply recalibrate.
That’s way better than an insurer finding out six months to a year down the road a business added more workers–and hitting them with a surprise charge then.
At the end of the day, the company never overpays, the insurer charges what they should, and everyone wins.
This is exactly why I started working for Hourly–to see small businesses get the insurance they need, at a rate that actually makes sense.
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Proactively Helping Businesses Lower their Workers’ Comp Premiums
With all of this exciting work ahead of us, the thing that moves me the most?
Since we’ll know what’s happening with so many mobile businesses, we’ll be able to advise them on the challenges they’re most likely to face. We can help them avoid payroll errors and other issues that can hurt their business. So in the future, they have the potential to reduce loss, which could reduce premiums.
Ultimately, when a small business needs workers’ comp insurance, we’ll know more about them today than we did yesterday.
And I can’t wait for tomorrow.
Jerico Foutch-Vinsonhaler leads Hourly’s underwriting strategy and oversees the company’s portfolio of small and medium-sized businesses across the country. Before Hourly, she spent 20 years leading underwriting strategy at Markel, a global specialty insurance provider with over $50 billion in assets.
