Introducing Cuttleflow Go and the Cuttleflow Marketplace

Welcome to the first Cuttleflow newsletter.

We set up Cuttleflow Systems to make it easier to start and grow a specialty insurance business. Today the cost of getting a product to market is a barrier in itself. Before it writes its first risk, a new product needs a wording, a rater, a question set, policy documents, a system to quote and bind, and reporting for its capacity provider. That usually means a build project and an upfront budget, paid before any premium comes in. Because of that cost, some good underwriters never start, and some established markets never add a second product.

This month we are announcing the price of Cuttleflow Go, which we built to remove that barrier. For the first 10 clients, Go costs $1,000 per product, paid by card when you apply. If Go is not right for you, tell us within 30 days and we will refund the $1,000 in full. After that you pay 1.5% of the gross written premium you place through Go, with a minimum of $250 a month once your product goes live. There is no build fee and no contract to negotiate.

We can charge this price because every Go product uses the Cuttleflow standard wording, rater and question set. We build each product once, and every market on Go uses it. You set your own rates, rules, limits and endorsements, and you quote and bind under your own licence and authority. Our fee rises only as your premium rises, so the cost of starting is small and stays in line with the business you write.

The same standard makes the Cuttleflow Marketplace possible. When the Marketplace launches, a market on Go will be able to give brokers automated quotes without building anything new.

Go is in development, and we are preparing a Go sandbox for a first small group of invited markets. If you want to be one of the first 10, register your interest.

Come and talk to us about your business, not your software, and we will find a solution for you.

Yours sincerely,
Max Broodryk
Co-Founder & Executive Director, Cuttleflow Systems
max@cuttleflow.com · +61 402 476 189 · LinkedIn

This issue leads with Cuttleflow Go and its pricing, and the Cuttleflow Marketplace, which is now available as a demo. It then covers what we have added since we opened to clients on 10 September, and what we are building next. We will send an update periodically.

Cuttleflow Go

IN DEVELOPMENT

A financial lines product on a standard wording, with your own rates and rules

Cuttleflow Go will let an insurer, underwriting agency or Lloyd’s coverholder set up a professional indemnity, management liability, D&O or cyber product on the Cuttleflow standard wording, with its own rates, rules and limits, and quote it to its own brokers, without a build project.

What Go will do

• Set up on the standard: enrol, confirm your authority, choose a standard product, and load your own rates, rules and limits. Every change is tested on sample risks before it goes live.
• Set your cover within the standard: turn covers and extensions on or off, set the limits and excesses you offer, add your own endorsements, and put your logo, comments and subjectivities on the schedule.
• Work every submission in one place: submissions arrive in one inbox, including those your brokers send or forward to your Cuttleflow Go email address, and are quoted, referred and bound with the same tools, inside the authority you hold.
• See your business: submissions, quotes, binds, referrals, rate change and broker activity, in one set of reports.
• Access to the Marketplace when it launches, allowing you to provide automated quotes to brokers (see the next article).

Every Go product uses the Cuttleflow standard wording and question set. You set your own rates and rating parameters, your own underwriting rules and the extensions you offer. You can add a few questions of your own, each with a reason your brokers can see. You quote and bind under your own licence and binding authority.

Pricing. For the first 10 clients, Cuttleflow Go costs $1,000 per product, paid by card on application, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The platform fee is 1.5% of the gross written premium placed through Go, with a minimum of $250 a month once the product goes live. There is no contract to negotiate: you accept our online terms when you apply, and we give 60 days’ notice of any fee change. Brokers and insureds pay nothing. Prices exclude GST. We are preparing a Go sandbox for a first small group of invited markets.

See Cuttleflow Go pricing and register your interest

The Cuttleflow Marketplace

IN DEVELOPMENT · DEMO

One standard, every market

We are building a marketplace for specialty lines with the brokers and markets who will use it. Brokers submit once, on a standard question set and wording, and receive comparable quotes from every market that wants the risk. Markets receive complete submissions, already checked against their own underwriting rules. It starts with cyber, management liability, professional indemnity for engineers and architects, excess layers, and D&O.

The Marketplace is now available as a demo: a working version on fictional clients and risks. Brokers and markets can ask for an invite code, try it, and tell us what to change. The next step is a production-ready sandbox, followed by each class opening when its conditions are met.

What brokers can do in the demo

• Place a sample risk: choose markets, compare quotes on the same wording, and bind.
• Get an indicative price from a short question set, from markets that price automatically. The full proposal follows only when the client wants to go ahead.
• Price a risk yourself where a market has opened online pricing, and service policies: cover changes, cancellations and renewals.
• Build an excess programme: set the layers and see which combination of quotes fills the tower.
• Run sales funnels for an industry, and receive enquiries from businesses that find you through search engines and AI assistants. Each enquiry goes to you only.
• See your pipeline, conversion, income, renewals and funnel results in one set of reports.

What insurers, agencies and coverholders can do

• Work every submission from one inbox: open market risks emailed to you, and Marketplace submissions, quoted and bound with the same tools.
• Choose how you price each class: the Cuttleflow rater with your own rate sheets, or your own rater, with a window to enter your price.
• Decide what brokers can do online for each class (nothing, an indicative price, a firm quote, or quote and bind) and which policy changes are processed automatically.
• Price excess layers from the layer beneath, using your own increased-limit table.
• Decide whether your indicative price can appear in brokers’ sales funnels. It is off until you turn it on, and protected by a CAPTCHA, rate limits and checks for rate probing.
• State your appetite as underwriting rules, publish your rating method, and see reports on submissions, referrals, rate change and price adequacy.
• Markets will join the Marketplace through Cuttleflow Go, which is in development.

The Marketplace is not open for live business. Nothing in the demo is a quote, an offer or cover. Each class opens only when its opening conditions are met, including licensing advice.

About the Marketplace · For brokers · For markets · How the demo works · Our operating commitments · Ask for the demo

For brokers

IN DEVELOPMENT

Sales funnels

Industry-specific digital sales funnels for brokers and agencies. Each funnel connects to an insurance product, so a prospective client sees a price within the funnel, and every campaign is tracked so it can be improved. Funnels are part of the Marketplace demo: see the lead article.

For underwriting agencies and coverholders

LIVE

Partners page

Our website now lists the service providers a new underwriting agency needs when it sets up: licensing and compliance, capacity broking, wordings and legal, claims, and risk surveys. No money changes hands either way, and a listing is not an endorsement. See the Partners page.

BEING BUILT

Renewals

Automated renewals that pre-fill last year’s answers and show the underwriter what has changed. Brokers will be able to set their own review window rather than work to a fixed number of days.

BEING BUILT

One queue for submissions

An underwriter workbench that brings submissions from email, PDF and broker systems into one triaged queue, with an AI-assisted worksheet for each risk. The AI summarises and checks the information. Every quote and bind decision stays with a named underwriter. The Marketplace demo shows the same inbox handling Marketplace submissions alongside email.

For schemes, mutuals and associations

BEING BUILT

Rating a whole scheme in one run

Batch processing for member schemes. An administrator loads a dated rate table, rates hundreds or thousands of members in one run, reviews only the exceptions, and issues documents in bulk.

PERSPECTIVE 23 · OUR LATEST ESSAY

Association insurance schemes should be run as a distribution channel

Our latest essay argues that association schemes should collect member data once and deliver cover to members at scale, rather than relying on paper forms and an annual email. We are happy to run a scheme on Cuttleflow as a complete service, for a small fee per policy. The broker or scheme owner pays no build fee and does not need to run a software procurement process. Read Perspective 23.

For insurers and Lloyd’s syndicates

OPEN TO PARTNERS

We are looking for capacity partners

We are talking to Lloyd’s managing agents and insurers that want to back new underwriting agencies on Cuttleflow. Cuttleflow is a software company: binders are negotiated and placed by the capacity provider and a placing broker in the usual way.

Reviewing a new agency’s wording, rater, systems and controls costs about the same whatever the size of its portfolio, which is why small agencies are expensive to back. On Cuttleflow, every agency on a product template trades on the same controls from its first risk: authority is enforced at bind, every premium can be reproduced from its inputs, each action is written to an audit ledger before it takes effect, and bordereaux are produced to Lloyd’s Coverholder Reporting Standards from the records that rated and bound each risk. A provider that has reviewed a template for one agency has reviewed it for every agency on it. Due diligence, and the service-provider evidence required under APRA’s CPS 230 or Lloyd’s delegated-authority and coverholder audit requirements, then grows with the number of templates rather than the number of agencies.

See how it works on our capacity page: authority, reproducible pricing, the audit ledger and bordereaux. For the argument in full, read Perspective 18, The cost of saying yes, and Perspective 19, Compliance by Design. If you would like a walkthrough with your delegated-authority team, email Max.

Insurers can also use the platform directly: Cuttleflow Go to launch a line of business quickly, and the Marketplace to quote brokers’ submissions on the standard wording (see the lead articles).

For everyone: events and Perspectives

EVENTS

Where we have been

We launched Cuttleflow in Sydney on 10 September, hosted by Sparke Helmore. The slides and spoken notes are on our website, with every source linked: the launch deck. Since then we have exhibited at two Underwriting Agencies Council market exchanges, in Hobart and Geelong, and on 15 October ran a webinar for UAC members. Email Max if you would like the webinar slides.

PERSPECTIVES

Short essays on how the market works

Perspectives is our series of short essays on how underwriting agencies, capacity providers and brokers work, and what changes when the systems underneath them change. There are 23 so far; the latest, on association schemes, is above. Browse all Perspectives.

All updates