Dan Schuleman, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Qumis, unhappily remembers a time when he worked as outside coverage counsel for an insurance company litigating a commercial property claim.
Executive Summary
"What year is this?"That's the question that popped into Dan Schuleman's mind when someone dropped an insurance policy in a three-ring binder with a commercial insurance policy on his desk, directing him to mark it up with highlighters and sticky notes.
That's one of the memories from a career as a coverage attorney about a decade ago that prompted Schuleman to co-found Qumis, an AI-powered platform designed to help insurance professionals and lawyers analyze insurance policy language and more accurate coverage decisions. Here he describes the mission and near-term future of the InsurTech.
It was “a classic battle of experts. My guys said it costs this much. Their guys said it’s that much.”
Experts aside, the insurer lost a multimillion-dollar dispute for a reason that wasn’t really based on the nuances of coverage language that specialists on both sides were engaged to dissect.
“It was a very aggressive plaintiff, and they found that the initial coverage letter from the carrier went out late. By law, there was a certain amount of days in which the carrier had to respond, and it was three days late,” Schuleman said, remembering that the plaintiffs proceeded to tack on bad faith claims.
“It was a loser,” he said, still stung by the memory of going back to the insurance company to ask what happened. “‘They’re right. This letter did go out late.’ The answer was, ‘It slipped through the cracks.'”
