Four Small to Medium Business Insurance Types, Explained

By The Boost Team on Mar 10, 2023

10 min read

Learn about four types of useful insurance for small or medium businesses

From accidents to theft to lawsuits, there are plenty of scenarios that could result in unexpected costs for a small to medium business (SMB). Insurance is a vital tool for SMBs to protect themselves and their employees from potentially serious financial losses.

However, with so many kinds of SMB insurance products on the market, it’s not always clear which types a certain business may need. In this blog, we will outline four useful insurance products and explain which kinds of companies would most benefit from having them.

1. Cyber Insurance

With 98% of businesses having an online presence, and many businesses storing sensitive customer and company data in internet-accessible databases, cyber insurance has never been more relevant or necessary. As the world becomes even more digital, the volume, sophistication, and frequency of cybercrime are rising, and the need for cyber protection is growing in equal measure.

When a company experiences an attack on its digital property, the cost can be devastating. In 2021, the average cost of a data breach hit $4.24M, and on average, it takes a minimum of two years for SMBs to pay off the cost of a data breach.

What is cyber insurance?

Commercial cyber insurance is a product that helps businesses financially protect themselves from the risk of cybercrime. Similar to any other insurance product, companies can save themselves from exorbitant expenses in the event of a cyber attack by making regular premium payments. A cyber insurance policy typically covers expenses such as:

Breach Response Expenses: This can cover the forensic expenses to discover exactly what happened in a breach situation, as well as the cost of notifying individuals affected, monitoring customer credit, overtime salaries for employees handling the breach, call center expenses, public relations expenses, and more.
Cyber Extortion: In the event of cyber extortion where certain information or capabilities on the business’s website are being held for ransom, this coverage includes the forensics, interest, and negotiation expenses in an extortion event. This can include a certain amount for ransom demands.
Replacement or Restoration of Electronic Data: If electronic data or programs are damaged or lost due to a cyber attack, a cyber insurance policy can cover the cost to replace or recover those directly impacted by the incident.
Business Interruption and Restoration: The loss of revenue due to disruption of the business, impaired customer retention and acquisition, and damaged reputation can cause ongoing financial hardship. This coverage includes the cost of getting a business up and running again after a cyber incident. If a business is interrupted for longer than a certain period of time, this kind of coverage may also pay for revenue lost during that time.
Defense, Fines, and Penalties: There are often various fines and penalties associated with cyber attacks. Insurance can cover the cost of defending a company if the breach results in a regulatory proceeding, and also the cost of potential resulting fines or penalties.

Even more comprehensive policies might reimburse a business if its money is stolen in a fraudulent transaction. One example would be if a company’s email is hacked, and the scammer uses it to initiate a fraudulent bank transfer. Other policies can include coverage for hardware replacement if computers were permanently damaged, higher ransom payments to regain control of systems or data after a ransomware attack, or reimbursement if a scammer tricks the business into sending money.

What companies should have cyber insurance?

Any company with an online presence can and should have some form of cyber insurance. If a company has a website where it conducts business—making transactions, storing information, or communicating with customers—or if it uses a cloud storage system to house critical information, that company would benefit from cyber insurance.

Large corporations tend to be more appealing targets for cybercriminals because criminals can make more money per hack. However, SMBs are also frequently attacked, which can be far more detrimental for those companies. Because SMBs don’t have as much expendable income as larger corporations, the loss can have deeper, longer-lasting financial repercussions.

What cyber insurance products are available?

Traditional insurers tend to create products that only cater to large corporations both in coverage options and pricing, which has historically left the SMB market significantly underserved and overcharged.

However, the landscape for SMB cyber insurance is changing, and more digital, customizable cyber insurance products are becoming available for a wider variety of businesses.

2. Business Owner's Policy (BOP)

Running a small business comes with a lot of risk. For example, if a customer were to slip and fall on the floor of a hair salon, they might bring a personal injury lawsuit against the business. If a coffee shop’s espresso machine breaks down, the cost to replace it might be substantial (not to mention lost revenue while the shop couldn’t serve espresso). For an SMB, these kinds of costs can endanger the entire company. It’s far better for companies to err on the side of caution and protect against these risks, and for that, BOP insurance is essential.

What is BOP insurance?

BOP insurance exists to protect a company’s assets and operations. By paying a monthly premium, businesses can protect themselves from larger expenses if a covered incident occurs, such as:

Bodily injury that occurs on the business’s premises
Property damage
Personal injuries (such as defamation or infringement)
Damages caused by the business’s products

BOP insurance policies often have options for additional endorsements such as cyber, that provides basic protection against cyberattacks, or crime in the event of robbery, theft, counterfeit money orders, forgery, or unauthorized credit card use.

Depending on what industry the business is in, it could also have industry-specific coverage. For example, a restaurant might add endorsements that would cover losses related to food contamination. A retail store might add an endorsement to cover related costs if one of their products is recalled and must be withdrawn.

What companies should have BOP insurance?

Every SMB should have BOP insurance, but what varies is the level of complexity depending on the size of the business. For example, a self-employed freelancer would have different coverage from a medium-sized startup with a hundred employees. The needs of SMBs will be different as well, and the products available to them are unique.

What BOP insurance products are available?

Digital insurtech providers of BOP insurance typically build easier-to-understand products that are made for freelancers and gig economy workers, and can be configured online. These products often aren’t enough for SMBs' needs—they only offer a limited amount of coverage, and often exclude risks that SMBs frequently encounter.

On the other hand, legacy insurance providers of BOP typically build complex products that are too expensive and too complicated to understand without the help and recommendations of a traditional insurance agent. In many cases, the coverages and limits they offer are overkill for SMBs.

Options are more limited for single-location small businesses, but as the insurtech industry expands, more digital-first BOP insurance products are entering the market that cater specifically to the SMB market.

3. Management Liability Insurance

Allegations of employment discrimination, wage disputes, and sexual harassment are only a few of the issues that can spark a lawsuit, and all are expensive to defend against.

In 2022 alone, workplace settlements cost companies nearly $2 billion combined. From big corporations to start-ups, a workplace lawsuit can be a major financial liability. Even if a company has done nothing wrong, the cost of legal defense can endanger the entire business, and cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

What is Management Liability?

Management liability insurance is a collection of coverages designed to mitigate the cost of lawsuits against the company—specifically related to upper management. That means that if the company is sued, the insurance may cover legal fees, settlements, and other related costs. The three most common coverages included in management liability insurance all cover a different type of lawsuit:

Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance: This is a type of liability insurance for a business’s senior management in case they are sued for something related to their duties managing the company. This coverage frequently applies to both personal lawsuits against the directors and officers and lawsuits against the company related to their actions.
Employment Practices Liability (EPL) insurance: This protects the company from the cost of being sued for things related to hiring or personnel practices. This can include lawsuits alleging things like wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, and other employment-related issues.
Fiduciary Insurance: This protects the company from the cost of lawsuits related to mismanagement of the company benefits plan. This can include anything from bad 401(k) investments to wrongful denial of benefits.

Some management liability packages may also include non-lawsuit-related coverages, such as a type of crime insurance that covers kidnapping for ransom and other specific crimes against a company’s senior management.

What companies should have management liability insurance?

Any business with a management or leadership team should have management liability insurance. Companies with a C-suite, board of directors, or strategic investor partners could benefit from the protection that management liability offers. What SMB management liability insurance products are available?

The small to medium businesses that are most likely to need management liability insurance are startups. However, this market often has a difficult time finding a suitable policy.

Because most available management liability insurance products were created for larger companies, these products evaluate the level of risk associated with the business based on things like how long the company has been in business, how many employees they have, and their revenue numbers. Since startups often have little or no revenue and relatively limited business history, these kinds of underwriting factors often lead to startups being flagged as very high risk. When a company is flagged as high-risk, they will either be denied coverage altogether or, if they do get approved, the policy they are offered may be extremely expensive. Many startups simply can’t afford it.

A secondary challenge is how coverages are sold. It can be difficult for startups to understand what coverages they need because most distributors sell D&O, EPL, and Fiduciary coverages as separate products without a clear explanation of how they work together. This can be a barrier for these businesses getting the protection they actually need.

However, there are management liability insurance products on the market that cater specifically to startups. These products package the three coverages as a unit so they are easier to understand, and they use alternative datasets to better evaluate startup risks. That being said, it’s important for startups—and companies that cater to startups—to do their research and find a product that fits their business.

4. Parental Leave Insurance

Parental leave is the third most requested benefit for US workers, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 23% of privately employed U.S. workers had access to paid parental leave benefits in 2021.

In the absence of a national parental leave solution, it’s up to the private sector to find ways to support new parents in the workforce. Some companies offer self-funded paid leave to employees, but for many SMBs, this can be prohibitively expensive.

What is Parental Leave Insurance?

Parental leave insurance is a business insurance innovation designed to make parental leave affordable specifically for SMBs. The company chooses a package that covers the kind of leave they want to offer their employees, including factors such as what percentage of their employee’s salary to pay during leave, and how long employees can take leave.

Once the policy is customized and purchased, the SMB simply pays the insurance provider a recurring premium based on their selected benefits and employee demographics. When a covered employee takes parental leave, the company files a claim through their insurance provider’s claims process. Then the company will be reimbursed for the cost of paying the employee during the covered leave period, up to the contracted amount.

What companies should have parental leave insurance?

Every SMB can and should offer parental leave insurance. It is an important benefit for employee acquisition, retention, and overall satisfaction. It’s a solution that mitigates the large, unexpected leave costs that often prevent SMBs from being able to offer this benefit. With a parental leave insurance product, the employer can avoid unexpected costs by paying a regular premium, and they can rest easy knowing their insurance policy will protect them.

What parental leave insurance products are available?

Boost’s parental leave insurance is a first-of-its-kind product and is currently the only parental leave product on the market. It is specifically designed for SMBs and fills an important gap in the market.

Seeing as there is no national parental leave program or solution, the other options for parental leave include short-term disability, a combination of state-funded parental leave and PTO, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, which legally gives 12 weeks of protected, unpaid parental leave wherein the parent cannot lose their job during that time. However, most people cannot afford to go 12 weeks without pay. In short, parental leave insurance is a great option for SMBs who are looking to provide an equitable solution to their employees.

All businesses need protection against unexpected financial loss, and SMBs are no exception. When something does go wrong, the right insurance products can be a crucial support for SMBs getting back to business as usual.

If you cater to small to medium businesses and want to learn more about how you can grow your revenue by offering insurance—including but not limited to cyber, BOP, management liability, and parental leave— contact us, or dive into building your insurance program with Boost Launchpad.

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The Boost Policy Admin System: How We’re Different

Sep 16, 2022

As an insurance infrastructure-as-a-service partner, Boost provides more than just white-label insurance products: we also provide the technical infrastructure necessary to digitally offer those products on your website. The most important part of any insurance tech stack is the policy administration system (PAS), which is the system of record for every transaction related to an insurance policy. As part of Boost’s API platform, we deliver a state-of-the-art policy admin system (PAS) to support our products at every stage of their policies’ lifecycle. What makes Boost’s policy admin system so special? Here are seven factors that set us apart. One of the most complex parts of building a PAS is accounting for the differences between state insurance regulations. Insurance products must be approved by each individual state that you want to sell in, and each state has its own laws, regulations, and requirements regarding the sale of insurance. Depending on the state, you may need to account for changes in areas like: These parameters are built into Boost’s policy admin system. When a transaction takes place, our PAS will automatically apply the necessary rules for the customer’s specific state. This ensures that every transaction is compliant with relevant state regulations. State regulations change, however, and today’s "fully-compliant" is tomorrow’s "out-of-date." To make sure Boost's policy administration system keeps up, we have a team of in-house insurance law experts who carefully follow insurance regulatory developments in all fifty states, and provide guidance to the Boost technical team to ensure our PAS stays current. With Boost, you never have to worry about staying on top of state regulatory changes - we do it for you. A seamless transaction experience is important for converting customers, but a seamless claims experience is important for keeping them. When your customers suffer a covered loss, a fast, easy claims process helps deepen their relationship and engagement with your brand. With Boost’s PAS, the potentially complex claims management process is made simple. Rather than having to manually contact carriers and manage the process yourself, our first notice of loss (FNOL) API acts as a unified point of entry to all the services you need. Our FNOL API is connected to all appropriate claims administrators. When a customer submits a claim for their policy, we automatically route that claim to the right administrator, along with all available supporting documentation. The administrator gets everything they need to start working on the claim, in real-time. This helps reduce the overall time needed to process a claim, which then means faster resolution for your customers. User experience is a vital component of any digital service, but we’re equally concerned with developer experience. Our insurance API was built from the ground up to leverage modern RESTful patterns, and to be easy for developers to build to and implement. The API is also designed for consistency, so that once developers understand a given resource, they understand how to use it across our platform. From issuing a policy to executing a renewal, midterm endorsement, or cancellation, once your engineers understand how to do it once, they can do it anywhere. An essential piece of a developer-friendly API is good documentation, and so we make sure that our documentation is exceptional. Boost’s API documentation is intuitively organized, personalized to your business, and updated in real-time - so you’ll never need to worry about working with outdated docs. You’ll also get permanent access to a dedicated testing environment, so you can build out integrations and test new platform features with no surprises when you go live. All this makes it easier than ever to get your developers up to speed, which means you can get to market or make updates to your integration that much faster. One reason why building a PAS is a complex and expensive process is that the system must be separately configured for each insurance product it supports, and each additional product adds to the cost and timeline. This can be a roadblock for insurtechs looking to expand their offerings with new lines of business. At Boost, our partners can choose from seven white-label insurance products (with more to come). Our PAS is fully configured to support each product at their launch, so our partner can easily add new LOBs by simply updating their existing API connections to include additional Boost products. Rather than needing to work with multiple insurance providers to get the breadth of products that you want to sell, and having to integrate multiple other systems and products into a PAS, you can integrate one time with Boost and still benefit from multiple lines. Growing your business by expanding your LOBs has never been simpler. It may feel like the entire world has gone all-digital, but a surprising amount of insurance isn’t quite there yet. Many traditional carriers provide partners with the ability to rate and quote customers digitally…but then switch to manual processes to complete the transaction. Critical insurance functions like issuing policies, creating endorsements, filing claims, or processing renewals regularly require you to contact the carrier, then wait for a response. Boost’s policy admin system supports an entirely digital workflow end–to-end, allowing you to offer your customers a truly seamless digital insurance experience. From underwriting to policy modification to renewal, any function necessary for an insurance transaction can be performed through the PAS, with an instant automated response. There’s no need for either you or your customers to ever pick up the phone. The Boost PAS is built on an enterprise-grade platform, leveraging modern industry tools like Kubernetes and Terraform. With 99.99%+ uptime, multi-region support, and the ability to handle multiple releases per day, you can count on the Boost insurance platform to be available when you need it. We understand that stability is vital, and that’s why we’re also careful to ensure that the Boost insurance platform is versioned so that it stays backwards-compatible. If you build an integration based on a current feature set, and we make changes in a future release, your integration won’t break. You’ll be able to keep using it the way you always have - which translates to lower development costs over time since you aren’t forced to redo your work every time we make a big update. Modern customers expect their digital experiences to be speedy, and Boost delivers. The response time of our API is up to 10x faster than other insurance carriers. That means when we get a request through the API, we can process data and get a response back to the user with unmatched speed. No waiting around for a loading bar to tick through - the customer gets what they need immediately, and gets on with their transaction. Working with Boost helps you launch new or expanded insurance offerings at a fraction of the time and cost required to DIY, and a significant part of that savings is driven by our PAS. We built it from the ground up to deliver a fast, reliable, developer-friendly platform, so you can get what you need, when you need it, and get back to growing your business. To learn more about insurance infrastructure-as-a-service through Boost, contact us, or dive into building your insurance program with Boost Launchpad.

Learn how APIs work, and the attributes of a high-quality API

What Makes a Good API?

Jan 13, 2023

APIs have become ubiquitous in modern technology - and in modern tech marketing. If you’ve ever looked into buying a software service or platform in the last ten years, the odds are that a good API was listed as one of the selling points. But what exactly makes an API “good?” Before we dive into that question, let’s take a minute to recap what APIs are, and why they’ve become so central to business and technology. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the mechanisms that allow computer software to communicate with each other. APIs ensure that when one software system makes a request, another system can understand the request and respond correctly. When discussing the relationship between two software systems, the application sending the request for action is called the client, and the application sending the response is called the server. For example, your bank’s software system houses all of your banking data–that software system is the server. The banking app on your phone is the client. When you initiate actions in your banking app, like making transactions, checking your account balance, or even chatting with a representative, the app communicates with the bank’s software via its API and tells it which action to perform. The server provides an API for the client to use to perform actions. Let’s say that you want to make a transfer of funds from your checking account to your savings account. You open your banking app and navigate to the transfer tab where you are asked which account you are transferring from, which account you are transferring to, the amount you want to transfer, and any additional notes before you can submit the request. Within seconds of submitting your request, the number on your checking account decreases and the number on your savings account increases, and the physical amount of money you can withdraw from the bank for both accounts has changed. For this to happen and money to actually be moved, the app needs a way to tell the bank’s system what to do. That is where the API comes in. The APIs are the rules and protocols that are coded into both systems as a set of predetermined requests and responses. When you enter how much money you want to move and where you want to move it to, the client communicates with the API on the server. When the server receives that request, it reads the information and executes a predetermined set of actions to move exactly the amount of money that you requested into the correct account. From a technical standpoint, APIs consist of two main components: an address and a body. The address, also known as an endpoint, tells the data where it's supposed to go (in our example, the bank’s system). The body is the data that will be delivered to that address. APIs allow developers to automate functions and create a very clear, easy-to-understand relationship between what the user needs to do and what the computer systems will do in response to their requests. Without APIs, the modern conveniences of apps, digital transactions, and the like couldn't exist. Everything would require human, manual interference. Instead of quickly logging into an app on your phone to make a transfer of funds, you would have to physically go into your bank or talk to a teller over the phone, and your request would take much longer to process. But because of the code and predetermined actions built into digital systems through APIs, users can interact with services much faster. You can transfer your money in seconds, and the bank can gather your information, automate manual processes, and make their work more efficient. Now that we’ve established what an API is and why they are important, let’s talk about what makes a good API. While all APIs follow the same principle of allowing systems to communicate, not all APIs function equally well. The quality at which an API is developed impacts how effective any system will be at actually doing what the user is asking for. So what makes a good, well-constructed API? Here are 5 aspects of a good API. First and foremost, APIs should be simple. This means having clear addresses, endpoints, and easy-to-understand request body structures. In our banking example, the bank’s software and the app’s software are presumably owned and operated by the same company–the bank. Oftentimes, however, the client and the server belong to different companies. Developers at both companies will need to build their systems to be able to understand the API and react accordingly. A simple, straightforward API structure makes it easier to correctly implement. Let's take a look at an insurance API example. Say that you own a pet store and you have partnered with an insurance carrier to offer embedded pet insurance to your customers. In order for your customers to purchase insurance from you, they have to enter their information in a form on your website. Then the insurance company receives that information, makes an underwriting decision, and issues the policy. In order for the insurance company to receive your customers’ information and take action on it, your front-end systems need to communicate with your insurance partner’s system. The set of requests and responses between these separate systems should be simple and clear. The simpler the API, the faster and more seamless the integration between these two systems will be, and the fewer opportunities for mistakes. A good API should be able to execute all (or at least most) of the functions a user would need. Going back to our bank example, an app that allowed the user to check their balance but not to transfer funds wouldn’t be very useful to the customer. To be effective, the bank’s API needs to be able to handle most of the things a customer might want to use their bank app for. For more complex functions, it’s important that an API be able to collect and process all of the information needed to return a response. For our pet insurance example, let’s say that in order to decide to issue a policy, the insurance company needs ten pieces of information from the customer. If the API could only handle five of those pieces of information, the rest would need to be submitted separately (likely over email or a phone call with an insurance agent). It would be an inconvenient experience for both the customer and the insurance company, and increase the likelihood of manual errors. A good insurance API would be able to collect and process all information needed to issue a policy, right from the app or website. Errors are inevitable with any piece of software. What sets a good API apart from a bad one is how it handles errors when they arise. Good error handling can make the difference between getting back on track quickly, or getting bogged down in bug reports. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of software errors: 400 errors and 500 errors. The difference between the two is how much information they can give about what’s gone wrong. 400-type errors are specific errors with an identified problem. One of the most familiar is a “404 not found” error, which occurs on the web when a user tries to navigate to a web page that doesn’t exist. If you’ve ever mistyped a URL or clicked on an old link to an inactive page, you’ve seen a 404 error. Because 400-type errors give a specific reason for why the request failed, they also give direction on how to go about fixing the problem. 500-type errors, on the other hand, are much less clear. 500 errors indicate general server failures, crashes, or bugs. These tend to be more frustrating for users and developers alike, since they don’t contain much to go on for how to fix it. A good API should be able to produce mostly 400-type errors that identify the problem so that it can be easily tracked and fixed. When an API produces a lot of unidentifiable 500 errors, it indicates a poor-quality API. While not technically part of the API itself, good documentation is essential to a successful API. As developers integrate systems or build the API rules into an app, documentation has a direct impact on how quickly they can work, and how well they can avoid errors. Good documentation should specifically describe each of the endpoints, what the requests should contain, and what the responses will contain. In many applications, an API will touch various parts of an overall system. This is especially true for more complex operations like our pet insurance example. On the user’s side, applying for insurance might seem like a straightforward software operation - they fill out the form, and the software sends it. On the insurance company’s side, however, it’s much more complex. When the user submits their application, numerous parts of the insurance company’s system will be involved with the process. One part of the system will document the personal information they provided in the application. Another part will use that information to make calculations around premium costs, and still another part will generate the policy itself. In order to make sure this all happens seamlessly, developers need access to comprehensive, up-to-date documentation for how all these components interact and are executed via the API. Finally, a key benefit of APIs in general is speed. Rather than trudging through manual processes, APIs are meant to automate functions that would take much longer if human interactions were required. A good API should allow information to be passed between servers quickly and efficiently. Going back to our earlier examples, no one wants to sit and wait to see if their bank transfer request or their insurance application was successfully received. For the best user experience, APIs should process requests in less than a second. If an API is slow to respond, it may indicate inefficient architecture, or that the servers are housed on insufficiently powerful hardware. APIs allow businesses to function in a modern, technologically savvy way. By continuously improving the communication between client and server systems, consumers have access to a wider variety of digital transactions and services than ever before. If you want to learn more about Boost’s API and how we can help your business stand out through insurance-as-a-service, contact us, or dive into building your insurance program with Boost Launchpad.

What is Parental Leave Insurance?

May 10, 2022

If you’ve never heard of parental leave insurance, you’re not alone. Parental leave insurance is a relatively new product on the market but an increasingly necessary one. Let’s explore a few of the reasons why parental leave is important and what solutions insurance can offer. Becoming a new parent is a major life event that can be happy and exciting, but it can also present challenges in the workplace for both employees and employers. Over 60 million Americans are parents, but the U.S. is one of the few countries worldwide with no universal parental leave requirements. As such, nearly 30% of working women quit their jobs after giving birth. In states that do require paid parental leave, however, the rate of mothers leaving the workforce dropped 20-50%. It’s no surprise that according to recent studies, “When deciding to accept a job offer, 66% of employees said the employer’s paid parental leave policy is important.” Parental leave is a significant DEI issue for retaining female employees who become mothers. Social and cultural shifts over the past few decades have made this issue more important than ever. “With the increase in female employment rates, coupled with the decline of the male breadwinner family model…entitlements to job-protected leave after childbirth has become important policy measures to support parents” (EIGE). Employees ranked parental leave as the third most desired benefit, outranked only by flexible work and paid insurance premiums, but many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) don’t offer it. In fact, only 23% of private employers in the U.S. offer paid parental leave in their benefits package, which puts SMEs at high risk of losing their employees when parenthood arises. Though paid parental leave is a highly requested benefit, it can be expensive for businesses to cover. For SMEs, this often prohibits them from offering any benefit at all. Adding to the difficulty, paid parental leave is also an unknown liability on the balance sheet. Employers can't predict if or when their employees will use it, which translates to a potentially large expense that they can’t accurately plan and budget for. The Facebooks and Googles of the world can afford to be generous and pay that out of pocket, but many smaller companies can't. This puts those smaller companies at a disadvantage for both acquiring and retaining talent. In the absence of a national parental leave solution, it’s up to the private sector to find ways to support new parents in the workforce. Parental leave insurance is a business insurance innovation designed to make parental leave affordable for small and medium enterprises. This is how it works: an insurance provider offers the parental leave insurance product, sometimes as part of a larger business insurance suite. The SME chooses a package that covers the kind of leave they want to offer their employees. This includes factors like what percentage of the employee’s salary will be covered and the length of leave the SME will offer. The SME then buys the policy, and pays the insurance provider a recurring premium based on their selected benefits and employee demographics. When a covered employee takes parental leave, the small or medium enterprise will file a claim through their insurance provider’s claims process. The SME will then be reimbursed for the cost of paying the employee during the covered leave period, as spelled out in the parental leave insurance policy. It’s a solution for providing this benefit that mitigates large, unexpected leave costs. Instead, the employer pays a regular, planned amount in premiums, and can rest easy knowing their insurance policy will protect them. No more unknown liabilities on their balance sheet. Meanwhile, the SME can reap the benefits of attracting and retaining top talent by offering parental leave. With over 30 million small and medium enterprises in the U.S., there is a significant opportunity for insurtechs and embedded insurance providers to help businesses affordably provide this valuable benefit to their employees. Offering a first-of-its-kind, highly desirable insurance product is a forward-thinking way to set yourself and your clients apart in the market. By offering parental leave insurance, you can help your clients attract and retain top talent. Employees are far more likely to work for a company where they feel supported, and this product is an effective way to establish your brand as focused on employees’ well-being while helping your clients to do the same. More than ever, employees want competitive, comprehensive, and inclusive insurance packages, and offering parental leave is an opportunity to positively impact employee experience and perception of their employer. Additionally, adding parental leave insurance to your product lineup creates new cross-sell opportunities to boost revenue and LTV with your existing customers, and deepens their business relationship with you. Parental leave insurance provides an opportunity to stand out from the competition. This is a first-of-its-kind product that is not being offered by many insurtechs, but benefits employers and employees alike. You have the opportunity to get ahead of the curve with this innovative white label insurance product. If you want to learn more about growing your customer LTV with Boost’s Parental Leave Insurance, contact us.