In 2002, three insurance technology gurus put their heads together to figure out how the Internet would change the property casualty industry.
The result is a Windsor-based company called Artizan that concentrates on offering Internet solutions to over 1,000 brokers and agents across the country.
The business started with a staff of five and has quadrupled that number. Revenue has followed suit, growing in the past five years to about $6 million a year, according to President Richard Roy.
Around the turn of the millennium, Roy said he “did a mad scramble” trying to get a handle on how the Internet would change the property casualty industry. He wanted to jump on the Internet bandwagon as early on as possible, as soon as he saw how the Internet was becoming a “device for people.” He foresaw a business opportunity within his own industry to tap into high Internet traffic, claim filing online and e-mail inquiries. He wanted to be ahead of the curve.
“With cultural change over the last decade and the advent of the Internet, clients of these agents and brokers were beginning to be able to do business transactions 24/7. (Our) solutions were intended to meet those service demands,” Roy said. “We essentially build web-based applications that allow brokers and agents in the property casualty industry to extend computer systems and data systems to policy holders, like banks extend online banking to their customers.”
Typically, Artizan charges a small agency $90-150 a month for its services. For large regional brokers with several hundred employees, Roy says the cost for Artizan services ranges from $3,000-$5,000 a month.
Roy runs Artizan with two partners — executive vice president, Vincent Savarese, and senior vice president, Laurie Allen. All three ran marketing and technology divisions for AMS Services, Inc in Windsor before joining forces to start Artizan. They brought many contacts with them, which Roy said helped grow the business.
“When we started in 2002, the world seemed to have ample capital for any good idea that came along. You could almost stand in the street corner and ask for capital. So with that in mind, by the time we did all our marketing analysis and studies, 2001 had come along and the combo of 9/11 and recession that followed dried up all capital. So, we were a company of five scrambling from 2001-2002. In 2003, we took on capital from a firm in Illinois. We grew the company from five to 11 or 12 people by 2005. In 2005, the partners bought the investors out and brought the company private,” Roy said.
Six years ago, Artizan acquired a small company in Arizona and continues to grow operations there, according to Roy. Most recently, the company acquired a small firm in Avon called InsWorld, which Roy said will increase Artizan’s pool of agents and brokers by about 10 percent. The acquisition, he said, will also allow him to advance Artizan’s technology platforms.
“(InsWorld) is a great product. They just don’t have capital or bandwidth to grow it at the level we can. We thought this was an excellent fit for us. It’s an opportunity to keep the business alive and people employed,” Roy said. “InsWorld’s technology will give us the ability to take on a battle tested product. Our brokers will be able to more fluidly communicate with policy holders about all sorts of services. It’s the next natural evolution of product tools we’re going to need, an opportunity to push our revenue and growth timelines.”
Growth has been a steady theme in Artizan’s success story, according to Roy.
He said was able to double the size of his Connecticut-based employee pool last year and hired several young people out of college. He says he’s hoping to put 60-70 employees to work in Connecticut over the next 18 months.
Joanna Smiley, a Hartford area freelancer, writes the weekly Local Interest column for The Hartford Business Journal.
