Apollo Insurance Solutions, a Vancouver-based insurtech, has officially launched its small business insurance subscription through its ecommerce platform, that allows small business clients to quote and purchase insurance products online.
“Incidents of complex new risks are having a negative impact on Canada’s small businesses.”
The launch follows Apollo’s $1 million CAD angel round of funding, closed in April. Participants in the round included Apollo co-founder Drew Green, Matias Marquez, Kim Kaplan, and Tim Gamble. The company said its goal is to address the lack of efficiency and gaps in the process for insurance policies for small businesses.
“Today’s launch is a defining moment in the Apollo story, and a memorable day for the entire team,” said Jeff McCann, co-founder and CEO of Apollo. “We wanted to make it easier for Canada’s small businesses to operate, and a major pain point with starting and growing a small business is insurance.”
The company said current insurance policies require lengthy application forms and wait times for quotes, manual renewal, or reapproval by a broker upon expiration, as well as a limited window of access given office hours, which can be major pain points for small businesses.
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“Incidents of complex new risks such as cyber breaches, natural disasters, massive supply chain inefficiencies, and a lengthy application process, are having a negative impact on Canada’s small businesses,” said McCann. “As it stands, it currently takes roughly six weeks to process an insurance application through to policy issuance and payment settlement. By leveraging innovation and technology, Apollo is able to expedite the entire process to just five minutes.”
Apollo’s platform was created to help insurance brokers close deals in a timely manner, reduce costs, and increase revenues. Its goal is to simplify the insurance application, quoting, and buying processes through digitization, as opposed to using paper or PDF. The platform offers brokers access to multiple insurance products, covering over 500 classes of business, including studios, retail stores, and accountants, on a centralized platform. The company claims using this platform could free up to 45 percent of brokers’ time from administrative tasks.
The company was founded in 2017 by McCann, David Dyck, Justin Hamade, and Green. Since launching in beta in April, Apollo said more than 300 registered individual broker users have signed up on the Apollo Exchange platform, transacted 800 small business policies, and processed over 3,600 digital insurance applications.
Image courtesy Unsplash
