A career that spans the military, finance, data, and now, insurance.

Rob Bowen entered the insurance industry with plenty of valuable life experience—an asset in a business built on relationships. He served in the United States military, completing his service in 1995, before embarking on a career in finance. In 2008, he waded into the insurance world with data management work, but he longed to satisfy his entrepreneurial ambitions, and eventually decided to launch his own insurance agency in Chester, New York. 

Today, Bowen and his close-knit team at Patriotic Insurance Group handle personal and business lines, with a varied book that makes every day different. 

Faster commercial insurance applications and renewals. 

Once he started operating his own agency, Bowen quickly discovered the insurance industry was relying on technology that was well past its Best Before date. In fact, he recalls that he was, “...absolutely stunned—it just blew my mind how archaic the systems were.”

He was forced to work in systems that had not been updated in years, required the use of out outdated browsers, or provided a user experience that felt like something straight out of Mission Control at NASA in 1971.

It was frustrating, to say the least. But his biggest challenge was one that is familiar to anyone in commercial insurance: all those forms for applications and renewals. Whether he was forced to send them as paper documents or as clunky PDFs, the process was slow and outdated. When it came to ACORD forms, he was amazed by the overwhelming number of information fields, especially since so many of them had no bearing on the application or renewal of his customer. 

“My primary goal when I became a Broker Buddha user was to make ACORD forms easy—99% of the information they ask for is irrelevant to my customers,” Bowen noted. “And PDFs are just as awkward if they need to be edited, and not really a serious improvement over paper forms.”

Today, he believes he saves at least two hours of time with every renewal since starting with Broker Buddha. 

“I love the software because it takes a simple approach to solve a really big problem,” added Bowen. “So many applications try to do too much, and wind up not doing anything very well. This one absolutely delivers.”

A seamless onboarding process. 

What’s more, Bowen says the Customer Success team at Broker Buddha has been, “...spectacular.” By working with them, he is now getting more out of the platform than he expected, and he imagines that he will continue to unlock new benefits as he learns more about additional features. 

“I’m certainly no fossil but I’m not a tech wizard either,” Bowen laughed. “The onboarding process has been terrific, and it has made implementation super easy.”

Commercial insurance made faster. And less stressful. 

With the renewal process automated, the time spent getting them completed has sharply decreased. So have his stress levels. 

“Without the software, everyone basically dreaded renewal time, including me,” Bowen said. “Clients would put off tackling the forms we sent, and I couldn’t blame them—the way information was requested was not customer-friendly at all.”

Today, he notes, the process could not be simpler. Automated email reminders send prompts when renewal dates are approaching. Bowen or another team member sends a link, clients log in, and provide the necessary information through an intuitive online process. Forms are pre-filled as much as possible, and conditional logic means fields that are not relevant are not shown. A process that used to used to take weeks, and inevitably come right up against the renewal deadline, is now completed in a few days or even a few hours. 

For this entrepreneur, the efficiency gained from the Broker Buddha platform makes it possible to grow his book without adding support staff. Or spending his weekends dealing with tedious administrative work. 

“The platform is part of an effort to transform our agency and make it a truly digital operation. After just a few weeks, I knew we had made a smart investment.”