BondExchange Launches New Platform and Transforms the Way Agents Process Surety

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Jun 18, 2019, 14:00 ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C., June 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- BondExchange (https://bondexchange.com) upgrades their popular surety bond platform giving agents their own branded portal to directly distribute bonds to their clients.

The original platform launched in 2016, leading to tremendous growth at BondExchange, which now serves over 25,000 agents across the country. Rather than logging in and filling out applications online for their customers, the new features empower agents with tech previously attainable by only the largest insurance companies, including an easy way for their own clients to apply for and purchase surety bonds instantly online. By opening up the platform and enabling self-service, BondExchange can further scale services to hundreds of thousands of agents.

NEW FEATURES
To facilitate the self-service model, BondExchange created a new, much easier way for agents and their customers to find bonds in the platform's huge database and to apply for and purchase bonds online.

Find the Right Bond Every Time...
The upgraded bond selector now allows agents to easily find the right bond from the thousands of bonds available on the platform.

"All of our experience and customer feedback points to finding the right bond as one of the biggest pain points for agents in the surety bond process," said David Gonsalves, President of BondExchange. "Reading through our online chat transcripts and reviewing feedback from our client-facing underwriters, we discovered that agents ask for assistance most often during the selection of the bond, so we created a new way to walk the agent - and their customers - through this process."

The new bond selector makes suggestions using machine learning to determine the most likely bond selection based on the agent's past behavior, location, and other proprietary methods. "We start the agents off with questions we know they can answer, and before they know it, they've arrived at the right bond. More importantly, they're confident they've found the right bond, which reduces profit-draining hesitation so they can quickly quote and book the bond," Gonsalves said.

"Most of the time agents come to us asking for a 'surety bond.' They know plenty about their customer and what their customer is trying to accomplish, but they just don't always know how to translate that into the surety-speak that drives traditional bond systems," Gonsalves added.

Stop Filling Out Applications!!
"This latest release to BondExchange.com solves another major pain point for agents - collecting and submitting application information in a convenient manner for both the insurance agent and their customer," adds Gonsalves.

With the click of a button, agents can send their clients to their own branded online portal to apply for and purchase their surety bond instantly online. The agent delivers a high-quality experience for the customer while maintaining agency branding and earning competitive commissions, and lets the platform handle all the work.

"We found that while agents are eager to offer online insurance solutions to their customers, they find investing in technology impractical for niche products like surety," added Gonsalves. "With our new surety as a service application, agents can deliver an InsurTech solution to their customers with no investment in technology. We believe this feature will prove very profitable for our agents."

The new customer application directs customers of BondExchange agents to an online application branded with the insurance agent's information. Customers complete the simple and intuitive step-by-step application, receive a quote in seconds, and purchase the bond online with a credit card. The agent receives notifications along the way and a commission check when the bond is purchased.

"The concept of BondExchange, which exclusively focuses on the agency distribution channel, enables us as developers to push the envelope on truly new and innovative solutions for this industry," added Brian Ellis, lead developer on the project. "Rather than try to jerry-rig a legacy insurance system into lowest common denominator, one size fits all solution, we get to chart some new territory on an increasingly scalable and efficient code base, which is exciting for the dev team."

"This upgrade continues the evolution of BondExchange by pushing our tech out to the end customer, giving our agents a competitive advantage in the surety bond market," said Gonsalves. "We'll be launching more features soon to dovetail with this technology."

About BondExchange
Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, BondExchange is the leading national wholesale surety broker serving the bonding needs of insurance agents for over 40 years. Licensed in all 50 states and appointed with 30+ surety companies, BondExchange provides a "one-stop-shop" for agents to efficiently quote and issue bonds online, ensuring a fast turnaround and the best pricing for their customers.
Website: https://bondexchange.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bond_exchange
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/the-bond-exchange-inc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bondexchange/

Contact Information
BondExchange
[email protected]

SOURCE BondExchange