In his years of experience as a broker, Adam Mitchell has learned that small businesses often lack adequate coverage necessary for their operations or overpay on the commercial policies it maintains.
“The market segment underserved entrepreneurs, homepreneurs and small business,” Mitchell, owner-broker, Mitchell & Whale Insurance Brokers said. “At the same time, a lot of people were paying too much for insurance, possibly even $150,000 when all they need is $30,000 without all the frills included.”
As a result, Mitchell and seven other Canadian brokers partnered with
Gore Mutual to launch
uBiz, a fully seamless ecommerce platform that provides an “unbundled” product for more than 2.75 million self-employed Canadians across 22 industry categories.
Mitchell hopes that uBiz will prove to be a “game-changer” for small business owners across the country. While Bullfrog Insurance also quotes and bind policies for small business online, he believes that uBiz is more forward-thinking and will be met with a much higher degree of consumer demand.
“Bullfrog was sort of the first rendition of the mp3 player, and we’re the iPod,” Mitchell, owner-broker, Mitchell & Whale Insurance Brokers.
The website, offers tailored commercial general liability, home office contents and legal expense insurance for start-ups, new ventures and home-based businesses. These enterprises typically employ about five people or less, and include artistic entrepreneurs, management consultants and at-home beauty salons.
“This is just the logical step in helping people buy insurance,” Mitchell said. “For all the businesses out there with less than five employees, commercial insurance can be difficult and confusing, but now it’s simple, easy and cheaper.”
He also differentiates the product from its digital rivals by emphasizing its intuitive design, both on desktop computers and mobile devices.
“We have a much bigger drive to the user-friendly experience, there’s no intervention of an underwriter or broker unless the client requests it,” he said. In fact, consumers only need to answer “seven simple questions” about their business before they are able to obtain a quote.
Right now, the site provides coverage to 122 classes of business, but Mitchell expects that number to skyrocket over time.
“The anticipation is that there will be a thousand segments, and growing,” he said.
In addition to Mitchell and Whale, broker partners include ThinkInsure, InsuranceHero, Easy Insure, Surex Direct, iSure, My Insurance Broker and Shaw Sabey. The group invites any interested parties to view the new portal at
http://www.u-biz.com/.
