Recent product launches in the property/casualty insurance world include embedded insurance offerings from NEXT and Trellis matching customers of non-insurance companies with insurers, a tool to match carriers with appropriate technology partners from Celent, a cyber insurance add-on for homeowners from Safeco, and technology to deliver interior measurements of a property from a smartphone photo, courtesy of HOVER.

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Accounting and Insurance? NEXT Connect for Quickbooks and Pay-As-You-Go Upgrade. NEXT Insurance, an InsurTech dedicated to small business, and Intuit Inc., a financial software provider, announced the launch of NEXT Connect for Intuit QuickBooks on Tuesday. Through the embedded insurance offering, NEXT Insurance is now providing small businesses and accountants with the ability to obtain insurance quotes and bind coverage without leaving their QuickBooks account.

Additionally, users can benefit from NEXT’s pay-as-you-go offering for workers compensation, consult with trusted insurance advisors, and access multiple A-rated national carrier products, the InsurTech said in a media statement, announcing a technology upgrades to its pay-as-you-go workers compensation insurance offering in a separate statement.

Eric Harnden, VP of Partnerships and head of Agency at NEXT Insurance, explained that the upgrades “put less of a strain on the policyholder by providing access to bundled coverage, simplified automatic payments linked to payroll for both direct customers and users across [NEXT’s] ecosystem of partners.”

The upgraded pay-as-you-go offering uses Stripe Financial Connections to easily link a customer’s bank account making payments frictionless.

The workers compensation pay-as-you-go offering helps businesses manage cash flow in a time of economic uncertainty, NEXT said. The offering pulls data from over 200 payroll partners.

Post-purchase benefits for efficient policy servicing include the ability to easily add users to insureds’ accounts, improved policy management and payroll administration actions, certificate creation, and access to certificate and quote history.

“Our partnership with Intuit QuickBooks enables NEXT to ease significant pain points for the small business community by providing easy access to customized coverage and payments directly tied to a company’s payroll for their workers compensation policies—all without leaving their Intuit QuickBooks accounts,” said NEXT Insurance Chief Executive Officer Guy Goldstein in a media statement. (Related article: What’s Next? ‘Adaptive Insurance’ for Small Biz, Says InsurTech CEO)

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Too Many Tech Vendors! Celent VendorMatch Select ID’s Top Picks for Carriers. Also on Tuesday, research and advisory firm Celent announced the launch of VendorMatch Select, a vendor intelligence tool that helps insurance companies identify the top vendors to work with to meet their technology needs.

A video demonstrating the tool walks potential users through the process: Pick a solution type—Policy Administration Systems, for example. Then regions the carrier would like the vendor to have experience in, and then line of business expertise. A preliminary list of partners is then displayed. For each partner, the user can drill down further to view the best-known clients of that particular tech provider. Full profiles of each vendor, including features, benefits and brochures, are also available, along with report written by Celent that highlight the vendor’s work. A final step of the video demonstrates that a click on an email button connects the insurer with the vendor selected.

In a media statement, Celent says that the dedicated solution for insurance companies was created to help insurance buyers speed up the process of reviewing and selecting core systems from a crowded vendor landscape.

“The typical selection process for a financial services system takes weeks and sometimes even months, requiring a huge investment of time and resources, delaying the ability to get started on strategic initiatives. That’s too long in today’s world,” said Jamie Macgregor, CEO of Celent.

“Celent’s VendorMatch Select accelerates the shortlisting stage of this process from several weeks of online research, telephone calls and briefings down into a just a few minutes, allowing financial institutions more time to focus their energy on innovation and fresh market intelligence.”

VendorMatch Select is not only a structured repository of request for information (RFI) data directly sourced from vendors; it’s also a shortlisting tool that provides insurers with the top vendors to work with based on their specific technology needs. Using lines of business/products supported, geographic footprint and system type criteria, financial institutions can compare vendors and directly request RFI data, while managing all projects and communications fully on VendorMatch’s platform, Celent said.

Tiered subscriptions to VendorMatch Select provide rightsized access based on users’ requirements: single user, division (for a product team and/or specific group), or enterprise (unlimited number of users), Celent said.

Access includes system data visualization, access to the short-listing engine and the ability to request vendor RFIs. Subscriptions include unlimited search, discovery and engagement with analytics across technology solutions. Users may create, share, customize and rank results.

The media statement also mentions another option, VendorMatch Discovery, described as a tool through which financial institution can gain a general understanding of the vendor marketplace and create/manage projects within the platform.

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Safeco Insurance Launches Personal Cyber Coverage. Safeco Insurance, a Liberty Mutual company, has launched a new personal cyber coverage endorsement for Safeco Home policyholders, the company announced Monday.

Safeco’s Cyber Protection, available in 24 states, combines loss protection with proactive monitoring in an effort to protect homeowners from identity theft, online fraud, cyber extortion, cyber attacks, data breaches and cyber bullying.

The endorsement provides coverage for losses and expenses while providing services needed to restore and recover from the crime.

As part of the endorsement, Safeco also provides customers with expert-level case management and guidance from a dedicated team of specialists in the event of a cyber exposure. The endorsement includes proactive, comprehensive credit and deep web monitoring for sensitive information that may be posted for sale.

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HOVERing Inside. HOVER, a technology company that creates interactive 3D property models created from smartphone photos using a combination of deep learning and computer vision technology, announced that it is now able to provide interior property measurements in addition to exterior dimensions.

For insurance professionals, HOVER is now a complete exterior and interior solution to quickly generate to-the-inch measurements with just the phone in their pocket, the company said in a media statement.

The company’s new interiors solution allows insurance carriers to handle interior claims more efficiently by producing detailed interior measurements including floors, walls, doors, windows and openings in beautiful floor plans as well as detailed table views.

“Expanding into interiors has been a goal of ours since Day 1…With a complete solution to document claim details, our insurance customers will feel confident that they’re leading their business into a more efficient claims process and providing the modern, efficient resolution that homeowners expect,” said A.J. Altman, founder and CEO of HOVER.

The company leverages up-to-date photos to produce complete structural measurements that feed directly into the carrier’s Verisk or Claims Connect solutions for fast and accurate estimates. Additionally, HOVER enables carriers to allow policyholders to capture the photos themselves, enabling complete virtual adjustments and increasing trust in the process.

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Want to Bundle? Trellis Adds Home Insurance. Trellis, an InsurTech that allows drivers to compare (and then buy) insurance policies through third parties, announced Monday that it is making home insurance available as well on Saavy, the company’s embedded insurance marketplace.

This means that mortgage originators and others involved in home buying and home maintenance can open up a new revenue stream by offering home buyers the best home insurance possible, a company representative said.

Savvy can now recommend optimal coverage at the best price for monoline home insurance, as well as home and auto insurance combinations, the company said.

In addition to finding bundled insurance from the same carrier, users can also take advantage of curated “agency bundles.” With agency bundles, users can mix and match home and auto policies from different carriers to find the best value.

Trellis helps its partners integrate insurance as part of their suite of financial offerings by offering a fully embedded and white-labeled shopping experience. In December of 2021, Savvy began offering an end-to-end API solution to enable consumers to instantly search for and purchase auto insurance within a partner’s app or website. Using just their insurance login, consumers can compare their existing policy to prospective alternatives in a transparent, side-by-side manner. Consumers also have the ability to purchase a different plan and cancel their old one, all on the same streamlined platform.

“Launching homeowners insurance is a game-changer because it enables us to create so much more value for the two-thirds of American households who own homes,” said Daniel Demetri, Trellis’ founder and CEO. “For our partners, Savvy can deliver an even more holistic experience across their customers’ insurance needs. Furthermore, this launch greatly expands our universe of potential partners, including technology-driven companies in mortgage lending, home security, utilities and many other home-related areas.”