Innovating Insurance Outsourcing for the Modern Market

My name is Greg Morris, and I’m senior vice president of business development at Patra. So my responsibility and the responsibility of my team is the initial intake of net new clients and making sure that they’re set up for maximum success as they enter the Patra organization.

A couple observations we’ve had within the wholesale program administration and MGA space.

First and foremost, I think it’s a really good time to be in this business. As the world’s becoming more complex and more risky, we’re seeing more and more premium flowing into this space. So the importance and influence of organizations within this space has increased dramatically.

Secondarily, as it relates to technology, we’re now at a point where we’re seeing some demonstrable impact from some of these technology providers and InsurTech providers, which is fantastic news for the space, but there continues to be a lot of noise out there and a lot of information to sift through, especially as AI is advancing as rapidly as it has been.

The third thing I would say is acquisitions are no longer driving valuations to the same extent that they were in the past. The credit market’s tightened a little bit, so now a lot of organizations we work with are looking at operational sophistication to drive EBITDA and therefore business valuation. And so we’re seeing more board level conversations as it relates to operational strategy than we’ve ever seen in the past.

I think Patra is uniquely positioned to service the wholesale program administration and program space because we’ve been at this for twenty years. So, therefore, we have twenty years of industry specific experience and data to be able to serve the clients we work with in three specific ways.

First and foremost, outsourcing and doing outsourcing in a “roll up your sleeves,” kind of “get the job done really well,” flexible manner for the clients that we work with the backing of wholesale experience.

Number two, we have over a 125 engineers and data scientists working to understand the most common tasks within this space and the most impactful tasks and how we can wrap our people with the right AI and technology to force multiply the impact that they’re having from an outsourcing standpoint. And I think we have more progress in that than just about anybody else out there.

And then third, and maybe most importantly, we spend a lot of time upfront with our clients establishing the right foundation with them so that they can maximize the impact that the outsourcing we do for them has. Meaning, putting the right procedures and protocols in place as it relates to roles and responsibilities and where Patra applies versus where our clients apply; Putting the right procedures in place for things like escalations and quality assurance and continuous improvement.

And all of those investments and years of experience related to that have a tremendous impact on driving exponential impact to the outsourcing that we do.