Freight insurance is a 300-year-old industry that has often been slow to evolve. This is particularly evident in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape, where proper protection has not kept pace with the technological and sociological changes of the 21st century supply chain.
With more than 60% of freight under- or uninsured, the underinsurance crisis is a symptom of the fact that standard insurance practices cannot adequately protect stakeholders in the demanding environment of modern freight.
Traditional policies are designed for enterprise accounts; inherently cumbersome, inaccurate and one dimensional, they are designed for enterprise-scale organizations and are particularly unfit to serve small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) since they are slow to purchase, complex and often misunderstood.
Johnny McCord, CEO and founder of Loadsure, developed an end-to-end InsurTech solution that enables insurance brokers to better serve their freight community clients and tackle the underinsurance crisis.
Built to tackle the underinsurance crisis, Loadsure leverages high-resolution data and AI to analyze every detail of an insured’s risk and can generate custom insurance policies to their exact specification in seconds.
With its revolutionary “holistic freight protection” approach, Loadsure empowers the freight community to make informed decisions about exposure and cost-effectively protect their businesses from loss with a portfolio of digital insurance products and near real-time claims processing.
According to McCord, SMEs (who comprise a massive portion of supply chain businesses) have been forced to accept the limitations of traditional insurance processes and pay over the odds for policies that don’t fit their needs, or run the risk of exposure. “They rely on inadequate carrier liability policies which pay pennies on the dollar in the event that the carrier is proven to be liable,” McCord said.
Now, the biggest threats impacting the insurance segment are that the causation of loss is getting wider and more difficult to prevent.
“Many supply chain businesses are not sophisticated enough to predict and prevent these losses, even though the data is out there,” McCord said. “It’s Loadsure’s mission to deliver data driven solutions – to serve the freight community!”
Freight forwarders, carriers, shippers, brokers and 3PLs need access to products that can protect against loss without driving up costs, and unfortunately, there are many companies looking to exploit that need. “Too often, these businesses see an opportunity to manipulate their technology into a relevant shape, under the guise of providing a necessary service,” McCord said. “What sets Loadsure apart is its model as an InsurTech Managing General Agent (MGA) and Lloyd’s coverholder. That model allows for dynamic distribution and pricing.”
“We’re a digital-native company, but we offer end-to-end risk management, not a SaaS product, and don’t feel that using our technology should come at a cost to be borne on top of the premium,” McCord said.
Loadsure is harnessing the massive volume of supply chain, insurance industry and proprietary data to characterize (and price) risk at unprecedented granularity. “Data is our moat and unique selling point,” McCord said. “We combine data from across all pillars of our ecosystem to provide unprecedented insights.”
Loadsure’s flagship dynamic, on-demand cargo insurance policy, Thames, provides per-load protection, priced according to the specific characteristics of the shipment and available in under a minute.
“From there we’ve built out a growing portfolio of insurance products within our ecosystem, available to supply chain businesses via their insurance broker, to serve the demands of the spectrum of customers we serve,” said McCord.
Loadsure’s insurance products include Orinoco, dynamic shipper’s interest insurance, Huron, ocean cargo and stock throughput insurance, and Columbia, motor truck cargo insurance which provides carriers, freight brokers and freight forwarders with broad supplemental coverages.
As McCord says, Loadsure’s automated claims process is designed to make clients whole as quickly and as frictionlessly as possible. “Being best in class in pricing is one thing, but insurance has one other moment to shine, which is claims,” he said.
Customers are involved and have visibility throughout the claims process, receiving instant payment once the claim is approved. “While the complexity of claims is a major factor in time to settle, we recently settled a claim in under a minute,” said McCord.
Loadsure is working to empower the freight community to actively manage risk, with data-powered risk insights. “Alongside the pillars of risk transfer and automated claims, the active risk management pillar will usher in the era of ‘Holistic Freight Protection’ – a circular ecosystem which drives down the cost of insurance through automation and dynamic risk management,” McCord said.
Holistic Freight Protection empowers the freight community by predicting and preventing loss through risk insights, providing access to best-in-class risk transfer solutions, and delivering advanced claims automation.
To make life easier for shippers and carriers, Loadsure’s platform integrates seamlessly into insurance intermediary workflows and can be embedded into freight industry TMSs and load boards or accessed directly via web portal.
“We are all about delivering value to the freight community, which is the principle of insurance and risk management in general,” McCord said. “Protecting businesses is about more than risk transfer.”