The last century has brought constant change, evolution, and innovation. Nearly every facet of our society and economy has changed, in many ways for the better. 

Yet the system that allows society to transfer and mitigate risk—a bedrock of modern society—has not kept up with the times. Insurance is a trillion dollar industry that powers every facet of our economy and still runs on pen and paper. Very few APIs, structured data formats, or digital interfaces exist in this industry. Clients fill out mountains of paperwork, have little visibility into the products they buy, and are left to wonder whether their claims will be covered. Skilled insurance professionals spend their careers honing their craft, only to toil over paperwork and administrative tasks. Underwriters spend countless hours parsing through submissions and often do not have the ability to review everything they receive. 

At Newfront, we are changing this. By building the modern platform for the industry, we are offering clients, colleagues, and trading partners a new path forward—one defined by transparency, insights, and ease of use. Today I’m excited to share that we closed a $200m Series D to further our mission. This investment comes from Goldman Sachs, B Capital, existing investors Founders Fund, Meritech Capital, Y Combinator, Index Ventures, XYZ, Susa Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, PruVen Capital, Propel, Altai, and new investors including Tony Xu CEO of Doordash and Vetamer. This investment values Newfront at $2.2bn and reaffirms our commitment to investing in technology, service and resources, and geographic expansion. We will also explore building bespoke insurance products to meet the evolving needs of our clients. 

The round comes only 7 months after our merger that valued the combined company at $1.35b and serves as strong validation of our approach. In a short time, we not only grew our enterprise value by nearly a billion dollars but we also: 

United as one company, with a common set of values, mission, and vision

Welcomed 200 new employees from leading technology companies like Airbnb and Lyft and large insurance brokerages like Hub and Marsh

Brought on numerous clients across technology, life sciences, construction, real estate, maritime, aviation, non-profits, and agriculture while achieving profitability

Despite the progress, we believe our greatest days lay ahead. Rarely does the right team come together at the right time in a market ripe for change. 

If you are interested in modernizing this industry for clients, insurance professionals, and trading partners, please reach out.

Newfront, the modern insurance brokerage platform, today announced a $200 Million investment at a $2.2bn valuation led by the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital with participation from existing investors including Founders Fund and Meritech Capital.

Newfront Announces $200 Million Investment to Modernize Insurance

Insurance is a critical part of society today ‒ essential to every business and every individual. However, the industry as a whole remains rooted in outdated processes and antiquated technology. Clients and brokerages alike spend inordinate amounts of time on manual data entry and pen and paper processes; this takes time from clients operating their businesses and brokers from providing risk management guidance.

The broader ecosystem is not well-positioned to solve this. The insurance industry as a whole lags others in technology development. This is in part structural as capital limitations have limited brokerage investment in technology. Public companies are frequently focused on maintaining short-term financial goals and private equity acquisitions have saddled brokerages with heavy debt loads.

Beyond these financial constraints, many major brokerage technologies are closed systems, lacking APIs and other protocols standard in other industries that would allow brokerages to build on the existing software. This has left a “dog’s breakfast” of systems that don’t easily connect with each other and slow down technological innovation.

We believe that there has never been a better time to innovate. As all data moves online and we transform the insurance transaction, this creates a new paradigm to serve our clients, with improved service standards and new products.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Newfront, a cutting-edge technology-enabled brokerage, and ABD, a recognized innovator in insurance brokerage and risk management, have merged to accelerate building modern insurance experience. In coming together, clients will uniquely benefit from four areas:

World class advisors: People remain at our core and together, we now have a deeper bench of expert insurance advisors and risk management professionals, with specialization across 18 industries.

Technology: With a leading technology team and platform, we can deliver transparency and a high quality of service to our clients. Our platform also enables us to shift from capturing data at a static point in time to integration into continuous data collection from public and private data sources. This in turn helps us to improve client outcomes and build new products, shifting from annual policy cycles to ones that continuously evaluate risk.

Operations: By bringing a scalable approach to service managed to SLAs, we can provide transparency that benefits our clients, and set and exceed their expectations.

Shared culture: All of this is supported by our client-centric approach. It starts with ensuring a caring people culture because we know our clients are served best when we can bring the best professionals to serve them. It’s also driven by our deep roots in a long-term focus and entrepreneurial innovation.

We’re only at the start of this journey and are excited to build the modern insurance experience together to improve the industry for our clients. Welcome to Newfront!

Transforming the delivery of risk management and employee benefit solutions through a cutting-edge technology-enabled brokerage and a recognized innovator in insurance brokerage and risk management - two leaders, ABD and Newfront, have merged to accelerate building the modern insurance experience. 

Creating a successful new business is hard in any industry, but in insurance it’s an especially daunting challenge. You need a world-class team, a differentiated product, and deeply supportive and patient carrier partners. Even with all of that, you need a healthy serving of luck.

At Newfront, we’ve been incredibly fortunate to have all of those ingredients. And while we’re still a long way off from achieving our ambitions, today is an important milestone. We've spent the last three years focusing on building a strong business, and today we're announcing that we’ve raised more than $100MM to date, most recently at a $500MM valuation. Founders Fund and Meritech Capital are our lead investors. A full list of investors is here.

While our journey is far from over, this has certainly been a time for us to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come. My own story with insurance began early in my career. I was lucky to help build two highly successful companies (Invitation Homes and Opendoor) and in both cases I was tasked with handling our property and casualty insurance. While happy to take care of something as critical as mitigating existential risk, I was stunned by the archaic and confusing process. I filled out mountains of paperwork, waited for weeks, and then received back wildly different options that were nearly impossible to compare. There was no clear dataset to help me understand which carriers to approach, which coverages to seek, or how peer businesses were buying. The process repeated each year, and was even worse when dealing with claims.

As a businessperson, it shocked me that the safety net so crucial to a functioning economy, innovation, and entrepreneurship could be so broken. I dug in and found that I wasn’t alone in feeling the pain. My co-founder Gordon, an MIT grad who built a startup acquired by LinkedIn, had dealt with the pain of buying insurance for his company. For too many business owners, dealing with insurance has become an unpleasant, almost unbearable process. For insurance industry professionals, doing their jobs has become tedious, with the productivity gains made in other industries passing them by, forcing longer hours for lower pay. For industry leaders, attracting high-quality talent to the industry has become an existential challenge. I became obsessed with the idea of modernizing the industry by empowering the people at its core with purpose-built technology. 

Gordon and I launched Newfront in 2017, a year in which several startups were attracting huge investments with a goal of eliminating insurance brokers. We were convinced that their approach was dead wrong. We had already spent countless hours with CFOs, GCs, risk managers, and business owners and concluded that skilled insurance brokers are a foundational requirement for high-quality risk mitigation. The problem wasn’t the broker, it was the brokerage. The typical brokerage forced brokers to behave like data collection and paperwork processing machines, preventing them from deepening their skills or providing expert advice. The brokerages had abandoned their brokers. We resolved to do something about that.

But first we needed to learn what had gone wrong. Why had brokerages fallen so far behind the innovation curve? Why was the average net promoter score for brokerages sitting at a dismal 17 (with 100 being the best)? Why weren’t brokers given the tools that they needed? It didn’t take long to learn that many of these changes resulted from the rise of private equity within the industry. Over a dozen years, private equity funds had purchased thousands of brokerages around the United States with an exclusive focus on generating short-term gains for their investors, rather than long term value for clients. These funds, which operate on short investment windows, do not have the time or incentive to make material investments in technology, the client experience, or tools to support brokers. 

Our model is different. We have the resources, commitment, and know-how to create the brokerage that is truly built for the 21st century. A brokerage where we build our own technology and software in-house, where innovation is our mantra, and where improving outcomes and experiences for our clients is an obsession. While we’ve learned a great deal over the past three years (and made plenty of mistakes along the way!), our founding thesis hasn’t changed -- that the future of our industry combines experts with technology to better serve clients. 

Today we are a team of nearly 200, proudly serving over 5,000 clients across nearly every industry. While we are still only beginning our journey, our book already puts us in the top 100 brokerages in America. And we’re just getting started.

We've spent the last three years focusing on building a strong business, and today we're announcing that we’ve raised more than $100MM to date, most recently at a $500MM valuation.

“​As insurance firms adapt to maturing markets and economic turbulence, in the long run, their ability to integrate technology, talent, and business-model innovation into legacy environments may be the key to success.”  - "2020 Insurance Outlook" by Deloitte

Beginning in the early 2000’s, technological innovation and a new focus on customer experience began reshaping all consumer oriented and business service industries. Nearly every American consumer now has more choice than ever before and business operators have begun large-scale shifts away from legacy service providers in favor of vendors who provide convenience, speed, choice, and quality service.

While trillions of dollars of market capitalization have shifted hands in the turbulent movements of the new information economy, the commercial insurance industry has been left more or less behind. High renewal rates, a lack of alternatives, and significant barriers to entry have allowed commercial insurance to remain a backwater as innovations in client service and technology rapidly transformed other sectors of the economy.

It is clear that change has now come to commercial insurance. Hardening markets, the rise of millennial business owners, the predations of private equity in the insurance space, and increasingly convenience-oriented consumers have made commercial insurance customers deeply unhappy with the industry. Customer satisfaction in the commercial insurance industry is at 30% -  among the lowest of any American service sector. Recent surveys indicate that commercial insurance customers are more open than ever to switching agencies, as long as the new agency  can provide better quality service and increased convenience. Meanwhile insurance agencies still tout “going paperless” as meaningful technological advancement.

In addition to providing a poor customer experience, the insurance industry faces additional challenges around hardening markets, volatile economic conditions, increasing regulations, and a critical shortage of young talent.

These factors are forcing market participants to squeeze harder on their one-time partners. Carriers are pulling out of high risk areas, investing in direct-to-consumer technologies, and privately discussing lowering agency commissions. Brokerage owners are cutting splits and forcing producers to share support resources. Producers are left with fewer resources and support, while their customers face skyrocketing renewals with no improvement in coverage or service. It’s no wonder that only four percent of millennial workers are interested in a career in insurance. 

The industry’s response to these historic challenges has not been to innovate or improve but instead to cash out in the form of retirements and mergers, leaving the industry wide open to an onslaught of private equity. These private equity investors have no interest in solving the key issues facing the industry - they are focused on squeezing every last penny of profit out of the industry for their own investors. 

Newfront is convinced that American customers will always choose better value when it is available. And we are equally convinced that there is a tremendous opportunity to create more value in the insurance industry by harmonizing technology and human expertise. We build this value every day by building and leveraging modern technology to empower our team with tools and resources to more accurately assess and mitigate risk. We build it by finding new ways to attract and retain top talent, and we do it by giving our teams meaningful work within a culture where they have the autonomy to question dogma and innovate. We build it by working together to set a new standard for what the client, producer, and carrier experience can and should be. 

When we started Newfront, my co-founder and I saw an industry facing deep, structural problems. For clients, dealing with insurance had become an unbearable, unpleasant process. For industry professionals, doing their jobs had become more and more tedious as they were being told to work harder for less pay. For industry executives, finding high-quality young talent to enter the industry had become a major challenge. And we believe that society and entrepreneurship and families suffer when our collective safety net, the insurance industry, becomes frayed.

As a part of our pre-launch research, we first looked at other efforts to innovate and reform the industry. What we found was not very compelling. There were tech startups that built compelling technology but had wrong-headed ideas about replacing industry talent with computers. On the other side were existing industry incumbents whose best contribution to innovation was “going paperless” or using Docusign to execute agreements.

We were certain that there was a better path; one that combined the agility and technological capabilities of startups with the deep sophistication and customer focus of industry professionals. We further determined that our best bet for quickly delivering a superior client experience and better platform for producers and support teams would be by focusing on technology, economics, and culture.

When brokerages talk about investing in technology, they often mean buying off-the-shelf tools like AMS tools or application tools like Indio. These tools look great in the marketing pitch, but the reality is that they don’t work well with each other at all. And once these tech vendors become established, like the AMS providers, they stop innovating because they know how painful it is for brokerages to rip them out. These technologies may make some incremental improvements for the brokerages, but they don’t make support teams work better with producers, they don’t improve customer outcomes, and they’re not intuitive. This was not a direction that we wanted to go.

Instead we looked at the companies that we admired the most and saw that their differentiating value came about because they wrote their own software. Apple, for example, makes its money by selling hardware (phones, watches, computers) but instead of just selling those products they invested millions into writing software that they don’t sell. Why invest in software when you only sell hardware? Because Steve Jobs recognized that building a beautiful, magical, seamless software experience made their hardware incredibly valuable. Tesla sells cars. But by writing their software from scratch, they’ve provided a user experience that absolutely dwarfs the experience provided by other electric carmakers. The software is what made Apple and Tesla the two most valuable companies in their sectors.

Newfront is a retail insurance brokerage, and we build our software from scratch because doing so allows us to provide an experience to our customers, producers, and account managers that far exceeds that of any other brokerage in the world. Make no mistake - this is hard, expensive, sophisticated work. But our customers and employees make it clear that the work is worth it.

For us, this process started by building service for our clients similar to online banking. Our customers can log in to see their policies, their covered entities, download their certificates, file or check on claims, and access (or pay) their bills. We've made the entire insurance application process digital, and our customers’ information carries over from year to year, which makes renewals much less painful for them and for our staff. Then we built our own AMS system. Then we started adding ideas from our producers that would delight their prospects.

Our second key area of differentiation was around the economics for our producers. For too long this industry has extracted as much money as possible from the producers in order to line the pockets of the ownership. With the rise of private equity, this inequality has only gotten worse. Agencies are cutting service staff, cutting splits, and cutting producers out of any meaningful ownership. We think that that is wrong, but also incredibly shortsighted.

The hardest job in any brokerage is producing new business. The gifted professionals who do this work should share in as much of the value as possible. And when everyone in the agency works their tails off to build a successful, transformative business, they should get equity.

Newfront not only pays the highest splits in the industry, but we also give equity in the business to every employee. We believe that this shared ownership aligns us all to do what's best for our clients since our reputation with clients will ultimately determine the measure of our success as a company. Many question how we can afford the splits that we offer, and the answer is that the technology allows for efficiencies throughout the business that make us a far more profitable entity than other brokerages our size. We pass these savings back to our producers.

Our third area of focus was to build an incredible team with a terrific culture. The energy when you come into the office is electric — we're a group of people that knows we have a chance to truly move this industry forward, and you can sense that effort and drive from the team. Folks that come in to interview routinely say that they’ve never experienced anything as exciting as Newfront in their careers. 

We’ve built a powerful coalition that bridges the domains of technology and insurance. We have folks with decades of industry experience working side-by-side with talented professionals coming in with a fresh perspective.  By only hiring the best account managers, engineers, producers, creatives, product managers, and operators we’ve moved far faster than any other brokerage to seize the historic opportunity in front of us.

We've had an amazing journey so far and have brought on thousands of clients across the country who were searching for a better insurance experience. Looking ahead, we’re focused on scaling the team so that we can continue to improve and bring the benefits of working with Newfront to even more clients. The opportunity to move this industry is enormous and we're truly just getting started. Onward!

Like all of you, I’ve watched with dismay as COVID-19 disrupts our world and radically re-shapes our lives. As I write this, half of the world’s population shelters-in-place and the resulting business stoppage has unleashed economic calamity unparalleled in our lifetimes. For Newfront, the virus paralyzes some of our customers, dramatically slows down our unprecedented rate of growth, and freezes up the capital markets upon which high-growth businesses like Newfront depend.  

When operating conditions change radically, a business must adapt. For Newfront, the shift in credit markets and the consensus outlook for near-term economic activity presents us with a dramatically different set of operating conditions than we had anticipated at the start of the year. On Monday we made the incredibly difficult decision to restructure our business to operate effectively within the new environment. Unfortunately, that required us to reduce our workforce, especially on our engineering, recruiting, strategic growth, and operations teams. 

We did everything that we could to avoid this moment. We slashed non-essential spending on events, advertising, and travel. We instituted a hiring freeze. We cut most of our executive pay by 20%. My co-founder Gordon and I cut our salaries to zero. But in the end, these alone were not sufficient to achieve the safe harbor needed for us to renew our focus on driving innovation and unparalleled service to our customers.

These cuts are business-related and not in any way reflective of these individuals’ performance. I’m so grateful to each teammate for their dedication to Newfront and their hard work to drive our business forward. We are doing what we can to support those whose roles were reduced in this difficult time, including offering severance packages and extensions of the time periods for them to exercise their stock options so that they remain Newfront shareholders and a part of our community.

With all this said, I can tell you that I have never been more dedicated to our company or more convicted about our long-term prospects. Following this painful day, we stand on sound financial footing. I am fully confident that Newfront will emerge as a highly impactful and lasting business that will transform our industry.

These next few weeks will be among the hardest in our nation’s history.  In spite of this, we will build this business and care for our customers because we owe it to each other and to the people we are losing today, who will always be a part of the Newfront family.

Dear Newfront Clients, 

All of us across California are weathering a rapidly changing storm as we band together to flatten the curve on the spread of coronavirus and minimize the health impact to our country. I want to acknowledge that everyone is adjusting to new ways of working and feeling an impact, and we’re all in this together. Some of you, particularly our local business community and non-profits, are quickly facing a more difficult financial burden by the day. Whatever the size of your business, our teams at Newfront are partnering closely with experts across multiple industries and have some important information to share: 

Arguably the biggest question being debated is whether there will be coverage under property insurance and business interruption policies for projected losses arising from COVID-19. Many policies require a connection between the business losses and some “physical loss or damage” to property. Following the president declaring a state of national emergency on March 13, 2020, state and local jurisdictions began instituting orders and directives designed to address the spread of the outbreak motivated by the physical presence of the virus. The public is being told that everyone should assume that they are infected, and act accordingly. There may be credible legal arguments to make that the presence of coronavirus in a building renders that building unsafe, and it could be presumed that all buildings where people congregate have been contaminated. Where a property is rendered unsafe for use, there is some authority that this constitutes “physical loss or damage.” There can be no guarantees how an insurer might react to a claim, but we believe it is in many of our clients’ best interests to file for claims and track ongoing losses. We anticipate that these issues will be litigated in court, and we are aware of at least one lawsuit that has been filed and expect that there will be more. What is 100% certain is that if you don’t file a claim with your insurer, you will not get any coverage for your losses. As your broker, we can assist you in submitting claims to the carrier if you like, and we can also discuss how a claim might impact your coverage going forward, particularly if you are close to a policy renewal. Of course, any thoughts we may provide regarding potential claims do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion. Please connect with us at contact@newfront.com for more information. 

For businesses considering staff reductions related to COVID-19: the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act was signed into law on March 18, 2020, providing for expanded FMLA provisions and paid sick leave financial relief for businesses with up to 500 employees. The program provides for financial assistance for employers to provide paid leave to qualifying employees for up to 3 months, with a tax credit equal to 100% of the benefits used through December 31, 2020. 

The US Small Business Administration has announced it is now offering low-interest working capital fixed-rate loans to help small businesses, agricultural cooperatives and non-profit organizations to meet payroll and other financial obligations that are being disrupted due to coronavirus. Our clients in California may be eligible for up to $2M to help alleviate economic injury caused by the pandemic. The SBA may consider waiving this $2M limit for businesses who are major sources of employment. Applications are now available through December 16, 2020, but we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. 

The IBank Small Business Finance Center Disaster Relief loan guarantee program is now available to businesses in California with up to 750 employees who are experiencing financial distress as a result of coronavirus. The program includes Financial Development Corporation (FDC) partners to assist businesses in securing up to a 95% guarantee on loans of up to $20M. Contact a local Financial Development Corporation for support. 

Your Newfront broker may have additional options for helping you apply for reduced insurance premiums based on reduced operations or revenue forecasts. Where possible, we recommend reaching out to your business partners (landlords, suppliers, wholesalers) and asking whether they’d be willing to assist you for a grace period on your existing liabilities, temporarily reduced payments with reinstatement schedules (with or without interest), or relaxed debt to income covenants on your existing contracts. 

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has issued a statement asking insurance carriers to provide a 60-day grace period on premium payments during this challenging time if nonpayment is due to circumstances beyond the control of the insured, including life, health, auto, property, casualty, and other types of insurance. Several carriers are in process of updating their policies as a result. We are closely following this and will provide additional information as it evolves. 

For restaurants and bars directly impacted by shelter-in-place directives, this article on LinkedIn included excellent advice for how to transition to delivery and take-out if you aren’t already set up that way. If you decide to make a change like this, your insurance policy may require coverage adjustments so please reach out to your Newfront broker for support.  

We feel a deep sense of commitment to the success of all of our clients. We’re here for you working around the clock, and hope that you are all safe and healthy. If you’re in a position to do more for your community and are looking for other ways you can personally support local businesses during this time of need, this article from Inc has some awesome practical ideas.

We’re working on an official resource center to publish on newfront.com in the coming days and will be in touch as this evolves. Please also join us for real talk and Q&A on coronavirus topics on Thursday next week. 
 

We're Here For You: Guidance + COVID-19 Financial Resources for CA Businesses

Like all of us, you’ve been reading a myriad of frightening headlines on Coronavirus (formally COVID-19), which was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization this week. People are staying home from work, events are being cancelled, schools are closing or moving to virtual learning. This is impacting every aspect of our lives fueled by a very understandable human reaction, a fear of the unknown. 

As a CEO responsible for the well being of more than 250 employees, and also for writing and servicing complex insurance programs for thousands of Newfront clients, I want to let you know that we’re monitoring the situation closely. During this time of uncertainty, friends, colleagues, and clients have reached out to our team asking for information about whether their specific insurance policies cover community-spread disease pandemics (every policy’s language is different, but there’s a reason why the majority do not), what the precedent on this is, and what they should be doing to mitigate risk for their business and protect their employees (here are some great resources).

Let’s first take a step back to look at how the industry works to provide risk protection to companies and individuals. Insurers study historical data under various scenario models to predict the likelihood that certain events may occur and then provide financial compensation if such an event does happen. Carriers are regulated by each state to ensure that they aren’t over-charging customers for policies, but also that they aren’t charging excessively low prices or maintaining insufficient reserves such that they would go bankrupt if they didn’t have the funds to pay claims. Commercial policies are often nuanced and complex to take into account whether a company has a profile that demonstrates higher or lower potential risk for a workplace injury, property damage, business interruption, supply chain delays, and the lot of hypothetical events that could occur. 

How then, would a Coronavirus policy be priced? The insurance industry is very good at pricing risk it knows and understands -- it’s just that right now we don’t know or understand a lot about pandemics. So the reason Coronavirus and pandemics in general aren’t typically included in commercial insurance programs is because 1) it’s incredibly difficult to predict the probability and scope of damages with a community-spread disease, given there have only been a few cases we can point to in history (SARS in 2003 would be the most recent) and business / lifestyles have changed dramatically since then, 2) the cost of acquiring coverage for a pandemic would be prohibitively expensive save for the largest companies in the world, and 3) there was generally limited demand for such a policy given the rarity in recent history. 

We can look back at the SARS epidemic to better understand this. A 2004 analysis determined that the SARS crisis cost the world economy a total of about $40 billion, a number fueled by economic impact via travel, trade and financial networks, with both direct and knock-on effects. 16 years later, the world is much more interconnected by air travel and supply chains supporting multiple sectors including manufacturing. Any insurers able and willing to write policies against a future pandemic would need to be so highly capitalized themselves that they could afford to stay in business. 

So, if you’re a business not on the Fortune 500 list with hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars to spend on insurance, what are your options? While our lawyers require me to caveat that every commercial insurance program has its own nuances and none of this should be considered legal counsel, here’s what we generally know: Many business interruption and supply chain interruption policies specifically require “physical damage” such as a windstorm or flood. It’s possible that we may see legal experts develop sophisticated arguments as to why COVID-19 constitutes “physical damage,” or that other types of complex policy endorsements may apply in the Coronavirus case. There may also be political pressure for carriers to make exceptions if the global pandemic worsens, or for the federal government to provide a broader relief package for hourly workers and small businesses. If we see increased demand for pandemic-related coverage moving forward, there may be more insurers coming to market with broader options. With the situation changing minute by minute, it’s possible that all insurance coverages could come into play, from the most obvious types of coverage to the most unlikely. 

We can’t make any representation or warranty as to individual cases, but the answer as to coverage will be how the various policies respond to the virus and whether there is any compensational incident that occurred to activate coverage. Bottom line, we’re here for you to guide you through this. We will partner with you to submit all claims or potential claims to your insurance carriers to determine coverage. We’re in this with you and will fight to get as much as possible on your behalf. Please connect directly with your Newfront broker to review your policies if you haven’t already done so. For all other business managers looking for a coverage review, please reach out to me personally at any time at spike@newfrontinsurance.com and one of our specialists will provide you with a comprehensive consultation free of charge.

In the meantime, we’re recommending that businesses focus on risk mitigation. The CDC continues to provide updated recommendations for employers on how to prevent workplace exposures to COVID-19, including sending sick employees home, performing regular environmental cleaning, and encouraging remote work where feasible. At Newfront, I’ve asked our San Francisco, Sacramento, and Portland offices to work remotely for non-essential meetings as a precautionary measure until we know more. Our goal is to continue to provide the best service we possibly can at the speed our clients expect and deserve. For tips on how to manage a remote workforce during Coronavirus, we found this guide from LinkedIn particularly useful. 

We’re also in the process of pulling together more detailed information for business owners in the community and will keep you updated as the situation evolves. We’ll be hosting a webinar on this topic Thursday March 26 at 11am PDT with expert speakers and a Q&A. Please sign up here to attend.  

Commercial insurance policies & Coronavirus coverage - it's complicated.

When we started Newfront, my co-founder and I saw an industry facing deep, structural problems. For clients, dealing with insurance had become an unbearable, unpleasant process. For industry professionals, doing their jobs had become more and more tedious as they were being told to work harder for less pay. For industry executives, finding high-quality young talent to enter the industry had become a major challenge. And we believe that society and entrepreneurship and families suffer when our collective safety net, the insurance industry, becomes frayed.

Newfront is a retail insurance brokerage, and we build our software from scratch because doing so allows us to provide an experience to our customers, producers, and account managers that far exceeds that of any other brokerage in the world. Make no mistake—this is hard, expensive, sophisticated work. But our customers and employees make it clear that the work is worth it.

For us, this process started by building services for our clients similar to online banking. Our customers can log in to see their policies, their covered entities, download their certificates, file or check on claims, and access (or pay) their bills. We've made the entire insurance application process digital, and our customers’ information carries over from year to year, which makes renewals much less painful for them and for our staff. Then we built our own AMS system. Then we started adding ideas from our producers that would delight their prospects.

Newfront pays not only pays the highest splits in the industry, but we also give equity in the business to every employee. We believe that this shared ownership aligns us all to do what's best for our clients since our reputation with clients will ultimately determine the measure of our success as a company. Many question how we can afford the splits that we offer, and the answer is that the technology allows for efficiencies throughout the business that make us a far more profitable entity than other brokerages our size. We pass these savings back to our producers.

From “2020 Insurance Outlook” by Deloitte

“​As insurance firms adapt to maturing markets and economic turbulence, in the long run, their ability to integrate technology, talent, and business-model innovation into legacy environments may be the key to success.”

Newfront is convinced that American customers will always choose better value when it is available. And we are equally convinced that there is a tremendous opportunity to create more value in the insurance industry by harmonizing technology and human expertise. We build this value every day by building and leveraging modern technology to empower our team with tools and resources to more accurately assess and mitigate risk. We build it by finding new ways to attract and retain top talent, and we do it by giving our teams meaningful work within a culture where they have the autonomy to question dogma and innovate. We build it by working together to set a new standard for what the client, producer, and carrier experience can and should be. 

We’re thrilled to announce the hiring of Garth Hamilton, whose charge as our new Chief Sales Officer is to lead brokers in developing client solutions and continuing the firm’s rapid organic growth. Garth was most recently the Chief Sales Officer and property/casualty market leader at HUB, where he led the Pacific Northwest sales team of more than 300 professionals to three years of unprecedented organic growth. 

When Garth first met with the Newfront team, he wasn’t looking for a job—but he was struck by the caliber of his someday colleagues. “At Newfront, I’m surrounded by brilliant people who are experts in technology, insurance, and operations,” he said. “And I instantly recognized how I could contribute—by helping brokers grow their books of business. It’s the piece I know and love, and the way I can take part in this revolution within the industry.” 

Garth is a former insurance broker and agency principal, and knows what it’s like to build a book from scratch. That credibility, he explains, is essential for inspiring a team of brokers to do the best selling of their careers. “I’ve been through the fire as a broker and built my own book from nothing; unless you’ve done it, you don’t know what it takes,” said Garth.

As for Garth’s plans for Newfront, he sees his overarching goal as putting Newfront brokers in the best possible position to write new business. “That means designing the best, most competitive sales program in the industry,” said Garth. “One that makes people want to come work here because they know they can win.”

Garth would love to hear from you and can be reached at garth.hamilton@newfrontinsurance.com. 

Introducing Garth Hamilton, Newfront's Chief Sales Officer

From our clients to our colleagues and carriers, because of every single relationship 2019 has been a powerhouse. Here's how we stacked up... 

We’re thrilled to announce that Jonathan Young, our outside counsel since Newfront’s founding, has joined us full-time as general counsel. Jonathan has a background in insurance client advocacy and has handled hundreds of millions of dollars in claims. He has developed deep relationships with insurance brokers throughout his career and is excited to apply his broad legal experience to a high-growth setting. 

At Newfront, Jonathan will ensure that all of our operations run smoothly and are protected from legal risk, helping to position Newfront for sustainable, long-term growth. Additionally, Jonathan will provide expert advice to our clients on any claims issues that might arise and help them navigate legal considerations regarding their insurance coverage.

Jonathan left an established practice at Tonkon Torp LLP to join Newfront. Before that, he was a senior vice president at Harleysville Insurance (a $3 billion public insurance company that was purchased by Nationwide Insurance), where he was in charge of the claims and legal department.

Jonathan has also worked as a trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice and as a managing partner of the New York offices of both Reed Smith LLP and Sills Cummis & Gross P.C. As a trial attorney in both public and private practice, he's tried well over a dozen cases to verdict, representing Fortune 500 companies like Franklin Templeton Investments and JPMorgan Chase.

Jonathan holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and a JD from Georgetown Law.

Introducing Jonathan Young, Newfront's General Counsel

I’m thrilled to welcome Mike Brown to the Newfront team as our Chief Operating Officer. Mike is a seasoned and widely respected leader who joins us from Uber, where he led a 2,000 person team and a $5bn P&L. He’s previously held senior roles at Facebook and Twitter, and brings a tremendous wealth of experience that will advance Newfront’s mission. 

Over the last year, as Newfront grew to serve thousands of clients across the country, our team collectively decided to bring on an operations executive to help guide us to the next level. We were focused on finding someone who understood process and leadership at scale. Newfront board member Kevin Hartz suggested that before interviewing anyone, we meet some of the top operators to see what the best looks like. Kevin introduced us to Mike, and we were immediately impressed. He listened, asked great questions, and his deep experience with category-defining companies felt like a perfect match for Newfront. We set out to find someone like Mike. 

We interviewed senior operators from top insurance and technology companies, yet we struggled to find that perfect match. In June, I emailed Mike and said, “I've met a number of people but find myself measuring candidates against you. Can you recommend anyone?” 

After many meetings, breakfasts, and coffees with our team, Mike decided to join as our COO. We’re thrilled to have Mike with us to serve the next 10,000 clients and beyond. 

I’m thrilled to welcome Mike Brown to the Newfront team as our Chief Operating Officer. Mike is a seasoned and widely respected leader who joins us from Uber, where he led a 2,000 person team and a $5bn P&L.

Blog ‍

Connect ‍
with ‍
us. ‍

Articles from Spike Lipkin

Newfront Announces $200 Million Investment to Modernize Insurance

Building the Modern Insurance Experience

Just Getting Started

Innovation in the Insurance Industry

Founding Newfront

Impact of COVID-19 on Newfront

We're Here For You: Guidance + COVID-19 Financial Resources for CA Businesses

Commercial insurance policies & Coronavirus coverage - it's complicated.

Founding Newfront

Innovation in the Insurance Industry

Introducing Garth Hamilton, Newfront's Chief Sales Officer

2019 Year In Review

Introducing Jonathan Young, Newfront's General Counsel

Announcing Our COO: Mike Brown

Newfront for Businesses

Newfront for Employee Benefits

Newfront for Private Clients

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Articles from Spike Lipkin

.css-13o7eu2{display:block;}Newfront Announces $200 Million Investment to Modernize Insurance

Building the Modern Insurance Experience

Just Getting Started

Innovation in the Insurance Industry

Founding Newfront

Impact of COVID-19 on Newfront

We're Here For You: Guidance + COVID-19 Financial Resources for CA Businesses

Commercial insurance policies & Coronavirus coverage - it's complicated.

Founding Newfront

Innovation in the Insurance Industry

Introducing Garth Hamilton, Newfront's Chief Sales Officer

2019 Year In Review

Introducing Jonathan Young, Newfront's General Counsel

Announcing Our COO: Mike Brown

Newfront for Businesses

Newfront for Employee Benefits

Newfront for Private Clients

Blog ‍

Connect ‍
with ‍
us. ‍

Newfront Announces $200 Million Investment to Modernize Insurance