Founded by husband and wife team Jenn Knight and Niji Sabharwal in 2018, in just five, short years, AgentSync has graduated from the couple’s kitchen table in San Francisco, to a Unicorn operation, winning awards for its innovation and excellent work environment culture.
Not only did AgentSync encounter the challenges of COVID just over a year after its launch, but the company rallied and thrived throughout that period, despite the challenges which sent other startups into a tailspin.
Indeed, as the business environment – and especially the often archaic insurance space has been forced to digitally transform, AgenSync has provided a vital service to the industry, offering solutions that enable insurance carriers, agencies, and MGAs to deliver experiences producers love while ensuring growth and compliance.
Throughout this frenetic and heady journey, which has seen their team grow from just them, to a 250-strong staff, the couple also started their family, with Jenn giving birth to their daughter in 2020.
This husband-and-wife duo even increased the valuation of their startup ten-fold, to US$220 million in just eight, short months. In 2021, AgentSynch also closed its Series B Round having raised US$75 million, and hitting Unicorn status with a valuation of $1.2 billion.
Niji Sabharwal is CEO, while Jenn is AgentSync’s CTO – and together, their success has been truly inspiring. We caught up with them to find out more.
Describe your journey into insurtech. What’s the story?
Niji: I worked in sales strategy and operations roles at Zenefits, where I led the producer licensing and broker compliance response team to overcome regulatory compliance issues the company faced.
I discovered that maintaining broker compliance with a growing and evolving business using only a spreadsheet was almost impossible. The more we caught up with requirements, the more we realized we were missing.
But we weren’t the only ones struggling to maintain compliance.
We made Licensing+ publicly available as an open-source download, and were surprised to see how many other insurance businesses wanted this kind of automatic compliance tool. For me, that was a proof-of-concept that showed if compliance is too hard, many organizations simply won’t do it. That sparked my mission of making compliance easier, automatic, and integrated into every other process. that led to what is now AgentSync.
Jenn: I’ve worked in the Salesforce environment most of my career, solving back-office problems for LinkedIn, Stripe, and Dropbox. Watching Niji work through the tangles of insurance compliance at Zenefits, I saw an obvious problem that needed a solution. The spirit of building the product now known as AgentSync Manage was spot-on for my interest – helping business partners get an understanding of workflow, getting it unstuck, removing clunky manual processes.
Agentsync is moving from strength to strength – did you ever think your plans would take you to this point when you first started out?
Jenn: When we started AgentSync, it was just Niji and me in the kitchen in San Francisco.
Niji: We made the decision to relocate the company to Denver before the pandemic. In a span of a few weeks, we put in an offer on a house, discovered we were pregnant, and raised seed money for AgentSync.
So many companies burn through millions of dollars before they even bring a viable product to the market. We proved product-market fit and then we started building our team.
Jenn: The most valuable insurtechs help those working in the insurance industry reduce the amount of time they spend on manual and repetitive tasks. With technology doing the heavy lifting, talented people get back the bandwidth to focus on what matters most. It allows them to focus on the parts of the job only humans can do – whether it’s revenue generating, client relationship building, or creatively innovating.
Niji: With any industry, there’s a risk for businesses that are looking to disrupt long-established processes. Instead, insurtechs that want to modernize infrastructure have to work to understand the insurance industry. At AgentSync we talk a lot about shared pain – the idea that you can’t just roll out flashy features if they don’t solve the real issues of the industry.
AgentSync also received awards for having a great company culture. What’s the strategy and how have you achieved/approached this part of the business?
Jenn: Our customers really are our partners. Complying with state, federal, and local licensing requirements and regulations can be a real administrative challenge. It’s invaluable to have people who are willing to work with you to solve their problems, and who share your enthusiasm.
We can only build modern technology infrastructure if we work alongside the people whose pain points we’re trying to solve, and make their priorities our priorities.
Niji: With any industry, there’s a risk for businesses that are looking to disrupt long-established processes. Instead, insurtechs that want to modernize infrastructure have to work to understand the insurance industry. At AgentSync we talk a lot about shared pain – the idea that you can’t just roll out flashy features if they don’t solve the real issues of the industry.
When we demonstrate to our customers that we can make it as quick and effortless as possible for their producers to get onboarded and stay in compliance throughout the lifecycle of their licenses, those producers will be their partners of choice.
Baked-in, automated compliance also reduces risk – after all, no one wants an agent selling their products when they’re out of compliance. It saves money on back-end, operational costs – and that enables businesses to do more without increasing headcount.
What’s the most important thing to consider in terms of generating investment interest and how has it worked for you in terms of Agentsync?
Niji: Those who take the path of tech-forward, automated compliance will be better poised to capture market share, even in a hard market cycle.
Jenn: The insurance industry is often cited as being slow to change, but that’s a bit of a misconception. The truth is this: insurance companies have always dealt with mass amounts of data. Harnessing that data and turning it into useful insights is a challenge only recently becoming easier with modern technology. As tech matures, so does our understanding of how we can use it to make the industry more efficient.
Is there a personal achievement from the past 12 months of which you are particularly proud?
Niji: We always put people first. We’re proud of our employees inspiring excellence in each other, acting like owners, nearly doubling revenue, and launching new products the insurance industry needs, all in an unsteady economy.
Jenn: We’re even prouder of how the team has upheld our core values as we’ve scaled as a company. The team is curious and ambitious, identifying opportunities to improve themselves, our products, and our customer experience. They are truly committed to helping solve the real pain of the paper chase in the insurance back office with modern insurance infrastructure.
What inspires you in insurtech today?
Jenn: Our customers really are our partners. Complying with state, federal, and local licensing requirements and regulations can be a real administrative challenge. It’s invaluable to have people who are willing to work with you to solve their problems, and who share your enthusiasm.
What’s next for Agentsync?
Jenn: Our mission is to connect the insurance industry, so we will be continuing to expand our product roadmap, and working to cement even stronger relationships with legacy insurance carriers.
We can only build modern technology infrastructure if we work alongside the people whose pain points we’re trying to solve, and make their priorities our priorities.
Niji: So many venture-backed tech companies emphasise growth at all costs, which can put their employees at risk for layoffs. Especially in this uncertain economic environment, we took a more modest approach to planning for 2023, ensuring we balance our growth goals and customer experience, while providing our team with stable, rewarding careers.
So our biggest goal for 2023 is to protect our people as much as possible from the risks associated with the current economic uncertainty, and come together to deliver on our promise to modernize insurance infrastructure.
Join AgentSync’s Founders in New York at ITI USA
To find out more about AgentSync’s latest strategies and innovations, join their co-founders at Insurtech Insights USA 2023 on June 7th and 8th, at the Javits Center in New York, where they will be taking part in the following panels: ‘What Lies Ahead for MGA & Insurer Partnerships in a Highly Digitised Future?’ and ‘Driving Your Organisation Forward With Advanced Analytics.’
- Niji Sabharwal, CEO and Co-Founder, AgentSync
- Jenn Knight, CTO and Co-Founder, AgentSync
To find out more, click here
