of a Series-A insurtech platform
Purchasing business insurance is usually a slow and painful process. Embroker set out to change that. Our customers were CEOs, founders, and small business owners looking to switch brokers and save money. We were a small scrappy team determined to revolutionize business insurance and save our customers time and hassle.
The mvp was not groundbreaking, technologically speaking. But it did set out to prove that great design, basic education, and policy transparency can remove 80% of the hassle of purchasing business insurance.
Our in-house brokers would recommend a policy and host it on the platform. A customer could log in to view their policies. As the product grew, customers could shop for policies, manage their certificates and claims, and track payment history.
We built features to manage multiple accounts and were able to expand into new industries such as cyber and cannabis.
Embroker had its specialized brokers based in Chicago. We worked closely that team to understand what clients needed, what the insurance industry expected, and what was legally feasible.
From there, we would translate familiar insurance templates to a digital model.
We also performed automated scrapes for uploaded documents and hid as much irrelevant or excessive data in order to speed up and simplify the process.
My messaging strategy was not to make insurance more fun, but less of a burden. I opted for direct, plain language with the voice and tone of a helpful, well-researched assistant.
In the product, I focused on our primary goal of guiding new customers through selecting the correct policy, uploading essential documents, and filling out forms.
This relied heavily on reducing excessive "insurance speak" in the UI with a bias towards policy-level notifications and actions.
Our product started desktop-only. As we expanded our offerings, certain clients — such as property managers and contractors — wanted an easy way to manage their certificates on site. We began to redesign our product to support smaller screens, and introduced a single-question-per-screen flow boosted our click-through rates.
As a fun team activity, the Embroker team held a naming contest for our canine mascot. My name submission "Shotwell" was voted the winner. Shotwell is the name of the street in the Mission neighborhood San Francisco where the Embroker Bay Area office is located.
