Keith Higdon | FinTech Magazine
As CEO and founder of Mission Underwriting Managers, Keith Higdon knows the pains and pressures of starting a business. In just 18 months, Mission has built a platform for entrepreneurial underwriters who want to start their own company but don’t have the funds, time or capacity to establish a general agency.
“The past year has been a whirlwind,” explains Higdon. “The assignment was started in February 2021. I was employee number one. We were focused on building what I think of as a platform, which is both services and technology to support underwriters who are entrepreneurial and want to take the next step in their careers. So we basically created an incubator for those types of individuals to reap the benefits of starting their own program manager series.”
The company operates as a hub-and-spoke model. At the center of Mission’s universe is the core team that Higdon has assembled, called Mission Corporate, which provides the expertise and support needed to onboard new partners. Then you have the serial partners themselves who work within their separate entities, such as satellites. Each series operates independently, meaning they are well isolated from other parts of the program.
“I think the key to Mission is diversification,” says Higdon. “Each of our series works on different aspects of the property and claims area. What makes us stronger is the diversification of those lines that the series does, as well as the diversification of capacity that provides it.”
Understand the startup experience
For Chief Product and Strategy Officer Chris Jones, who has lived the entrepreneurial life himself, it is important to understand the underwriting teams’ challenges. “One of the things I struggle with, being an entrepreneur, is understanding how hard it is to keep the culture and mindset, especially in an industry like insurance that most people don’t think of as very entrepreneurial,” he says. “From when we had a handful of employees at Mission and everyone just did what it took to get things done – that’s what I want us to be known for, as the disruptors in the insurance space.
“Over the last couple of years, to our benefit, there have been more of these other carriers that have started up and people are really understanding what we’re trying to do,” Jones continues. “Their business model is completely aligned with our business model.”
Gives a step up in technology
With the support that Mission provides, the entrepreneurs who join the program are able to get a big step up from the established ones. The person responsible for ensuring they realize this benefit is Mission’s Digital Officer Alex Williams.
“I would say the biggest technical challenge for our underwriting teams is how to get them up and running quickly without sacrificing quality,” says Williams. “It’s not just getting them up to where they’re producing and writing business and premium, but how we continue to develop their product and make sure the technology is a block step to enable that.
“The core that I want to make sure we achieve from a technology perspective is speed, flexibility and data quality. We have diversity in our partners and our programs, and we need to make sure the tools we use are flexible enough to meet each of their needs.”
After all, “I’m not out to reinvent the wheel,” she quips.
Read the whole story HERE.
