Insurtech platform Bold Penguin partners with Markel for E&S coverage

Bold Penguin has announced a partnership with Markel Specialty to expand commercial offerings on the Bold Penguin Exchange to include excess and surplus (E&S) coverage.

Columbus, Ohio-based Bold Penguin - a commercial insurance platform founded in 2016 - said the partnership marks the first time both standard commercial and E&S commercial options will be available on a single platform.

The E&S coverage adds to Bold Penguin’s existing offerings that include general liability, business owners policy, professional liability, workers compensation and commercial auto.

“We’ve noticed that now more than ever, E&S coverage is critical to modern SMBs,” said Mark Schauss, who heads up all binding P&C for Markel. “Partnering with Bold Penguin was the natural next step in transforming E&S insurance.”

Ilya Bodner, founder, and CEO of Bold Penguin, commented: “Our technology is unifying a fragmented market, and Markel is a major player in E&S underwriting, so partnering with them allows us to enter this space in an extremely impactful way.”

Bold Penguin said it can now offer E&S commercial coverage options alongside standard options to agents and brokers representing non-traditional SMBs three times faster than the traditional process.

The expansion was trailed by the company when it completed a $32mn Series B funding round last September that brought its total capital raised to date to over $50mn. Bold Penguin at the time said the additional capital would be used to accelerate growth in engineering, to make platform enhancements and to expand in E&S.

Among the investors in that round were Hudson Structured Capital Management, Lightstone, Guggenheim Insurance, Lockton, existing investors and individuals from Stone Point Capital.

In January this year Bold Penguin announced the acquisition of xagent, an independent, multi-quote platform for standard and E&S business.

The same month it expanded the workers comp coverage capabilities of its platform through a newly launched integration with biBERK, a Berkshire Hathaway company.

In February it added commercial auto to its platform. Earlier this month it announced the integration of National General Insurance with its platform, expanding that commercial auto insurance offering.

However, earlier this month reports suggested that the insurtech had laid off around 40 of its circa 150 employees in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The insurtech cited a drop in quoting activity for small commercial.