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Insurance Business Review: Specials Magazine
The most effective underwriting process is when information is collected at the site of risk, with direct engagement from licensed agents and stakeholders. Yet traditional intake remains fragmented, dribbling in from a variety of sources. Agents collect details through phone calls, email, old files or static ACORD forms, and then send that information to carrier systems for pricing and evaluation. When the information is incorrect or outdated, underwriting decisions cannot accurately match the specific risk. Growing use of AI in underwriting has also made carriers, managing general agents (MGA) and regulators more cautious about compliance and accountability. They now want agents to be directly involved in the process for better verification and field-level accuracy. Cloudbridge has developed the patent-backed mobile underwriting process that solves this at the source. It places the agent at the point of risk and modernizes the intake process. It allows licensed agents to visit businesses, commerical buildings or residential properties, and collect first-party underwriting information using mobile devices. The underwriting intake focuses on observable site conditions, including building conditions, electrical systems and security infrastructure risks. “Our mobile intake layer empowers the agent to be the most effective part of the transaction,” says Brian Murphy, Managing Principal of Cloudbridge. ... Read More
Top Reinsurance Risk Management Solutions Provider 2026
A reinsurer is most clearly tested when a claim is made. The question is not how much risk it assumes, but whether it meets its share of the claim as agreed. At Mutual Re, that expectation is addressed through its unique ownership structure. Each risk is shared equally across five owner insurance companies, with every participant assuming 20 percent. If one is unable to meet its share of the obligation, the remaining four automatically increase their participation to 25 percent each. Because this adjustment is pre-agreed, there are four backstops to every loss. We believe our structure delivers the strongest security in the industry. “We pay what we owe,” says John Meyers, president and CEO. “We build certainty by reducing uncertainty.” The same discipline informs how the company manages its overall exposure. Mutual Re maintains a deliberate gap between what it writes and the capital available to support it, with approximately $130 million in writings backed by $5.5 billion in surplus. That margin provides the capacity to meet claims as they arise, including those that develop over time in long-tail lines. ... Read More
Insurance Pay-As-You-Go Solutions of the Year 2026
Workers' compensation billing tends to break down not when a policy is written, but months later, when estimated payroll collides with the reality of how most businesses operate. Businesses project payroll at the start of a policy period, only to reconcile the actual exposure through audits that can trigger unexpected premium adjustments under compressed timelines. That dynamic disrupts cash flow for business owners, strains agent relationships at renewal, and adds billing and collection burden for insurance carriers. SmartPay Solutions was built to avoid that breakdown by taking ownership of payroll-based premium calculation and billing. Building on traditional billing challenges, it doesn’t treat billing accuracy as only an end-of-term reconciliation exercise. Instead, the company uses a pay-as-you-go model that aligns workers’ compensation premiums directly with payroll as it is processed. Exposure and billing remain synchronized in real time. Through this ongoing model, SmartPay has become one of the most established market leader in pay-as-you-go billing and a specialist in the insurance premium billing space. The company’s platform manages how premiums are calculated, collected, and remitted by integrating directly with more than 85 insurance carriers and programs and over 400 payroll companies. Today, it supports thousands of agents and tens of thousands of business owners through a payroll-connected billing infrastructure built to execute reliably across the insurance environment. This approach has earned SmartPay recognition as the Insurance Pay-As-You-Go Solutions of the Year, reflecting its role in standardizing payroll-aligned premium billing at scale. ... Read More
CXO INSIGHTS
Product Development and Reinsurance Partners
Kathryn Rudolph, AU, CPCU, Vice President of Product Development and Underwriting, Southern Guaranty Insurance Company (SGIC)
The Making of a Modern Underwriting Leader
Chris Bolick, Director of Underwriting, Shepherd
The Perpetual Hard Market for New York Construction General Liability
Bryan Paul, Vice President of Risk Management, Monadnock Construction
Leadership in Insurance Operations
Erica Denson, DBA, Director of Insurance Operations, American Family Insurance
Moving Beyond Compliance Toward Strategic Risk Leadership
Dan Bailey, Head of Enterprise Risk and Insurance Management, Topgolf International
IN FOCUS
Pay-As-You-Go Insurance Models Driving Smarter and Fairer Risk Pricing
Pay-as-you-go insurance uses real-time data and analytics to personalize premiums, improve fairness, and modernize risk pricing.
Strategic Business Insurance: A Path to Sustainable Success
Business insurance strengthens resilience, improves risk control, and supports long-term sustainable growth and stability.
EDITORIAL
Modernizing Insurance through Intelligence, Trust and Operational Resilience
The insurance industry is evolving beyond traditional risk transfer as carriers, reinsurers and insurance partners respond to increasingly complex exposures, changing customer expectations and a more data-driven operating environment. Across the sector, the focus is shifting toward stronger underwriting, greater financial resilience and connected workflows that support faster, more informed decisions. In this edition of Insurance Business Review, we recognize the organizations driving that transformation.
Recognized as the Top Business Insurance Solutions 2026, Cloudbridge is modernizing underwriting through patented mobile technology that enables licensed agents to capture verified, field-level risk information directly at the point of exposure. By combining structured data collection with agent verification, Cloudbridge helps carriers and agencies improve underwriting accuracy while preserving the human expertise essential to effective risk assessment.
This edition also features SmartPay Solutions, recipient of the Insurance Pay-As-You-Go Solutions of the Year 2026, for modernizing workers' compensation premium billing by aligning payments directly with payroll activity, creating a more predictable experience for carriers, agents and policyholders. Mutual Re, recognized as the Top Reinsurance Risk Management Solutions Provider 2026, is distinguished by its disciplined approach to capital management, underwriting oversight and claims evaluation.
Our CXO Insights explore two priorities shaping the industry. Karla Urias, Claims Manager at AmeriFreight Systems LLC, discusses balancing rising loss costs, operational complexity and customer trust through disciplined claims management. Gene Spencer, Director of Underwriting Risk and Quality Assurance at CompSource Mutual Insurance Company, examines how AI is reshaping underwriting while reinforcing the value of human judgment, industry expertise and relationship-driven decisionmaking.
Together, the organizations and leaders featured in this edition demonstrate that the future of insurance will be shaped by those who combine innovation with operational discipline, trusted relationships and sound risk management. We invite you to explore the insights shared throughout this issue.
