Large volumes of freight move through the spot market every day with insurance that inadequately protects its transporters from liability. With brokers, shippers and carriers in a constant clash for the best deals, often insurance is an afterthought.
Enter Loadsure, a U.K.-based insurance startup offering “pay-as-you-go” insurance for the spot freight industry. Its mission is to deliver a simple, full-service insurtech solution for the freight spot market.
Loadsure CEO and Founder Johnny McCord addressed the benefits of real-time, data-driven pay-as-you-go insurance with FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller as part of an interview during FreightWaves LIVE @HOME, a virtual conference held May 5-7.
Loadsure is an international Managing General Agent (MGA) that provides on-demand per-load insurance to brokers, shippers and carriers. The company’s U.S. affiliate is in Denver.
What is insurtech? The term is defined as the use of technology innovations designed to squeeze savings and efficiency from the current insurance industry model. As McCord became more familiar with the North American freight industry, he saw that it contained an abundance of data but many experienced difficulty keeping up with the exponential growth of transactional data on the insurance side of the industry.
“The North American transportation industry is very rich in data and there’s a lot that can be done with that, especially when it comes to the underwriting process,” McCord said.
McCord credited Loadsure’s beginnings in the digital space for its ability to understand and tailor its products to the rapidly changing conditions of the spot market.
Loadsure has developed an insurtech solution that enables shippers, carriers and brokers to purchase policies on a per-load basis with generally low premiums. McCord attributes that affordability to the fact that Loadsure doesn’t rely on a traditional underwriting process but instead calculates each premium through its dynamic real-time pricing model.
“Each policy is underwritten using technology,” McCord said. “Because there is no human cost involved with it, the price is true.”
With its pay-as-you-go insurance model, Loadsure provides Shipper’s Interest coverage on a per-load basis. According to McCord, this “All Risk” coverage provides a cost-effective blanket policy that covers the gaps in the cargo liability policies that many carriers have.
Since its founding in 2018, Loadsure has experienced considerable growth. The insurance startup announced in April that it had secured an investment of £1.2 million (approximately US $1.3 million) from a number of investors, including InsurTech Gateway, a London-based venture capital and private equity firm that specializes in launching insurtech ideas.
McCord explained that insurtech has long focused on innovating consumer insurance markets but believes that interest in developing insurtech for the business-to-business sector is growing.
“The insurance industry is facing a radical transformation at the moment,” McCord said. “The customer base for insurance markets are becoming more digital.”
