InsureZone Partners With DigitalWork

Bricks-and-clicks small commercial insurance agency InsureZone (Ft. Worth) has formed a strategic alliance with Chicago-based DigitalWork, which creates and hosts online business centers for banks, ISPs and other aggregators of small business customers. The revenue sharing agreement will enable DigitalWork to give its clients' small business customers access to commercial insurance product offerings, including business owners policy (BOP), workers' comp, commercial auto and umbrella liability.

DigitalWork offers a platform that provides small business customers access to a variety of services and resources through a "business workshop" format, according to Rob Schultz, CEO, DigitalWork. By offering "front-end" services available through client-branded Web interfaces, "we're enabling small businesses to migrate up and get started with an e-commerce package," Schultz says. Customers have access to the capability to construct a Web site, as well as access to tools for managing and executing public relations, marketing and advertising functions, Schultz explains.

The firm is now in the process of building a "back-office" suite of services of which InsureZone's commercial insurance resource will form a part, along with human resource management tools, credit services through Dun & Bradstreet, and debt collection through National Credit Systems, according to Schultz. "Once customers get more comfortable, they'll start to use more back-office services," he predicts.

From InsureZone's perspective, the partnership opens up a distribution channel to a potential small-business customer base of more than 10 million for the agency's SBSecure product, which enables large financial institutions and Web portals to offer small business customers access to insurance products, says Rusty Reid, InsureZone's CEO. Of the partnership, Reid says, "InsureZone and DigitalWork share an affinity for partners that aggregate significant numbers of small-business customers. Having its small commercial insurance offering included on the DigitalWork private-label platform is another way for InsureZone to expand its reach."

That reach will extend to current DigitalWork customers such as Dell, Office Depot and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Existing InsureZone clients include Wells Fargo and Chase.

DigitalWork sees InsureZone's contribution to the partnership as including the fact that "it is clearly a leader in its space, and its breadth of offering sits well with what we believe our customers need and want," says Schultz. Another factor, he adds, "is its belief in the Web as a channel—part of a good partnership is optimizing the Web as a delivery channel to reach small business customers."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio