Cole Bonawitzinsurance · durham, ncAn AI employee
for your insurance agency.
It works the renewals, COIs and endorsements your service team never has time for, so the accounts that should have been remarketed get remarketed.
I'm Cole. I'm a Duke student in Durham and I build agent systems. I'm building these systems starting with independent agencies around the Triangle, on exactly this: the paperwork that decides whether an account renews. What follows is what I would build for your book, and what it would not do.
Durham · Chapel Hill · Hillsborough · Morrisville · RTP
Your Tuesday, in your words.
- 7:40am
A COI that cannot wait
A GC's AP department will not release a payment until a certificate with the right additional insured is in their inbox. The client forwards the request to you with 'today please' on top.
- This month
Fourteen renewals, ninety days out
Each one is a re-shop across ten to thirty carriers, a requote, a comparison, and something presentable for the insured. The accounts nobody had time to remarket are the ones that leave.
- Any day
An endorsement mid-term
A new truck, a new location, an employee added. The client emails you, you email the carrier, the carrier comes back a week later wanting a signed form and a premium change re-explained.
- Always
Chasing carriers
Quotes come back from carriers that answer when they answer. Every day a submission sits, the client asks you for status, and the client is who you lose.
- March and September
Loss runs and premium audits
Audit forms, loss runs for a renewal, or for a competitor someone asked to quote. Rarely urgent, always due, and nobody's favourite afternoon.
- Silently
Dates that pass
Certificates expiring, filings and audit dates that nothing in the office flags. Invisible until they cost you the account.
- —By six, the service team has answered everyone who called and moved none of the renewals forward.
- —The admin gets done at 9pm, because it cannot be done at 3pm.
- —It is not a marketing problem. The book is there. It needs someone whose only job is to chase it.
Six steps, one human gate.
An agent for each kind of work your office does, one queue you approve from, and a report at the end of the week.
Reads the agency inbox, the policy dates in your AMS and the carrier mail, all day, so nothing sits in someone's head.
Decides what each item is, when it is due and what happens to the account if it slips, then ranks the day.
Writes the certificate, the renewal notice or the endorsement acknowledgement, working from the policy in your AMS.
Read it, fix a line if you want, send it. Nothing leaves the agency without a person.
Attached is the certificate for Ridgeline Mechanical on the general liability policy, effective 03/01. The additional insured wording the GC requested is on the endorsement page. Copying your service team.
Attached is the certificate for Ridgeline Mechanical on the general liability policy, effective 03/01. The additional insured wording the GC requested is on the endorsement page. Copying your service team.
Sends the certificate to the GC, the notice to the insured, the question to the underwriter. Chases what has not come back.
Writes the activity back to the account, and on Friday tells you what was chased, what you approved and what is still open.
Friday, 8am: the week, in numbers.
One email. What came in, what was drafted, what you approved, what went out, what is still waiting on a carrier. Per account, not per agent.
- +9 certificates issued, 2 waiting on you
- +3 renewals re-shopped, 1 quote outstanding
- +4 endorsements acknowledged, 1 form from the carrier
- +2 loss runs requested, both received
- +1 policy expiring in 21 days with no renewal activity
What it will not do.
It does not give insurance advice
It does not interpret coverage, recommend limits, bind anything, or tell an insured what they need. It moves paper and drafts what you approve. The judgement stays with your producers.
No employee health data without a BAA
Nothing touching medical or claims detail is processed until a business associate agreement is signed. Without one, it stays out of that conversation entirely.
Nothing sends without a person
Every certificate, notice, acknowledgement and email stops in an approval queue with the source policy attached. You approve, edit or skip.
Your AMS stays the system of record
It reads and writes activity to the management system you already run. It does not become a second place where the truth lives.
Your data, and exactly where it goes
Your book lives in the accounts and storage I set up for you, and you can revoke access at any time. To write a draft, the text of that request goes to the model provider I use, under business API terms that exclude training on it. Nothing else leaves, and every request is logged.
Everything is logged
Each action is written back to the account with what came in, what was drafted and who approved it. Nothing happens off the record.
One person, your book, no new software.
Built for your book
Your carriers, your policy forms, your account naming, your wording. Configured from a sample of real renewals and certificates, not from a generic template.
Email first, nothing to install
It has its own address on your domain. Your staff replies to it the way they reply to a colleague. SMS for one-liners when someone is out of the office.
A read-only dashboard
The approval queue and the weekly report on one page. Read-only on purpose: it is for seeing what happened, not another place to do admin.
Runs on my infrastructure
I host and run it. There is no software for your office to buy, and nothing for your IT to maintain.
No usage caps, no seat fees
Agents are added as your book needs them, usage is not metered, and support is included. There is no per-seat or per-email price to think about while you are deciding whether this is worth it.
A report every Friday
What came in, what was drafted, what you approved, what is still open. In numbers, per account. If a renewal is going nowhere, it says so.
Same-day fixes
A carrier changes a form, a template reads wrong, a date is off: you tell me and it is fixed that day, not at the next release.
What I have actually done.
Swoop Tutors, an outbound engine
I built the first outbound system for a four-person tutoring startup in Durham: enrichment, sequencing, A/B tests at 100 sends per variant per week, and the dashboard the team ran on. That is an outbound system at scale, run for a company. It was not run for an insurer, and I am not going to pretend it was.
My own system, running now
I run an agent system on my own outbound every day. It watches, sorts what came in, drafts a reply and waits for me to approve it before anything sends. That is the same shape as what I would build for your office, and I can show it to you on the call. It is a working demonstration, not a client.
One more thing, said plainly: I am a Duke student, and I am starting with independent agencies around the Triangle. If you want someone who has run a service team for twenty years, that is not me yet. If you want someone who will build this around your book, sit with your service team until it is right, and answer the phone when a carrier portal changes, that is me.
Twenty minutes, and I will show you what it would do for your book.
Send the email with your agency name in the subject line. I will come to the call having read your website and thought about your carriers. If it is not a fit, I will say so on the call.
Opens an email to cole@colebonawitz.com. Or reply to the message that sent you here.