Marketing & Distribution | Read Time: 3 minutes

Insurtechs Working Together: A Different Way to Cover Small Businesses

May 29, 2019

By: Patrick Girouard

Any agent who has worked with small business owners knows that the process is a complicated one. There is typically a lot of work involved, including working through complicated insurer appetites, policies that don’t properly cover customers, and what feels like endless forms to fill out in order to submit and underwrite a risk. And since these are small business owners, the payoff is smaller than other larger clients, discouraging agents from these accounts.

As the insurance industry is currently undergoing digital transformation, the quoting and underwriting process is no different.

Enter Attune

Started in January of 2017 and backed by AIG, Two Sigma IQ and Hamilton Insurance Group, Attune is reinventing how independent agents cover small businesses. Attune works only with strong financial insurers to offer Businessowners’ policies, Commercial Liability Excess policies and Workers’ Compensation.

As a digital-first general agency, ease of use is critical for our customer base and embracing digital is what springboards that experience. Attune uses technology to gather data to limit the amount of data entry agents must complete for applications and underwriting. Getting a bindable quote from Attune takes minutes – not days or weeks.

Attune’s use of data doesn’t stop with the application process. It is an integral part of its underwriting and analytical edge, allowing Attune to successfully write many classes of business including some of the most frequently searched classes on IVANS Markets: Lessor’s Risk, Medical Offices, Aristan Contractors and Restaurants.

Insurance for small business owners is deeply personal as they have their livelihood on the line with their policies. By embracing digital, we can further our mission of empowering our insurance agents to spend time where it matters most – with their clients, not on paperwork or administrative tasks.

Where can you find Attune?

Attune’s BOP, Excess and Workers’ Compensation appetite is now searchable in IVANS Market Appetite and within Applied Epic. As a free tool available to you, IVANS Markets allows you to search by NAIC/SIC code and state for commercial lines market appetite to submit new and renewal business.

Integrated within nine agency-management systems and available through markets.ivansinsurance.com, IVANS Markets allows you to search for insurer appetite within your daily workflows. Simply type in your search criteria, including state location and industry code, and instantly receive a list of insurers, MGAs and wholesalers who have an appetite for your risk and information on who you can contact.

Look for Attune within your search results, and request access to the Attune Portal.


Patrick Girouard

Patrick Girouard, Head of Business Development, Attune, is responsible for identifying, building and managing distribution and sub-producer relationships. Patrick and his team focus on both traditional insurance distribution (retail and wholesale) as well as strategic partnerships. He joined Attune from Hamilton USA in 2017, where he had a similar position in Business Development and played a significant role in the design and launch of Attune with Hamilton, AIG and Two Sigma IQ. Prior to Hamilton he spent eight years at Guy Carpenter & Company where he most recently led the Umbrella & Excess Casualty Specialty Practice and had numerous responsibilities as a team leader in reinsurance structuring, placement and strategic advisory for global insurance companies. Pat is a graduate from the University of Notre Dame and obtained his Masters of Business Administration from New York University's Stern School of Business.