Last week Vertafore® announced that Nationwide is the newest carrier partner to join its Commercial Submissions™ platform. The partnership will drive innovation in market connectivity and enable Nationwide agency partners to more easily generate and compare commercial lines quotes for clients.

In an environment where agents need faster and more efficient ways of serving and supporting commercial clients in 2021, the Commercial Submissions platform connects the insured, agents and carriers for simplified, real-time quoting on commercial policies. The platform works within Vertafore's agency management systems, allowing agents to reduce the labor-intensive, repetitive and time-consuming process of quoting commercial insurance coverage.

Nationwide plans to integrate all commercial lines products into the Commercial Submissions platform beginning in May with workers compensation, business owners policies and general liability. Vertafore will later integrate Nationwide's commercial auto, umbrella and other commercial lines.

After announcing a strategic shift in 2018, Nationwide completed its transition to a fully independent agent model in 2020 and is now aligned with more than 11,000 independent agents in the U.S. to sell personal lines, commercial lines, agribusiness, excess and surplus and financial services solutions.

"Partnering with Vertafore allows Nationwide to streamline processes for our agents, enabling them to generate quotes, issue new business, and service customers, resulting in agency speed, ease, and efficiency," said Kasey Ketcham, associate vice president of product and underwriting enablement at Nationwide. "We look forward to leveraging Commercial Submissions to drive value for our agency partners and help them grow their businesses."

Nationwide and Vertafore will collaborate to optimize the application programming interface connection between the two partners and to optimize the workflow for independent agents. The solution pre-fills 80% of application fields from the agency's management system and allows agents to invite clients to review quotes in real time, enabling agents to win business faster.

"Nationwide has a reputation for leadership in connecting to InsurTech solutions that make a difference for their agents and end-insureds," said Amy Zupon, Vertafore CEO. “This partnership will deliver great value to the thousands of independent agents who write commercial business with Nationwide."

Vertafore, which was acquired by Roper Technologies Inc. a leading diversified technology company, in a $5.35 billion deal last year, also recently announced a partnership with Rocket Referrals to create a client communications and reputation management solution for independent agencies using AMS360®.

Will Jones is IA editor-in-chief.