People Behind the Product: Q&A with Olivia Reyes-Becerra
By Pathpoint
 —ÂOlivia, you joined Pathpoint in 2022. Tell us about your background before Pathpoint?
This is a fun question. I'm a chemist - or materials scientist - by training. While I really love solving problems, I missed doing so with and for people. In academia, it can take decades to realize the impact of your work, and it can be isolating. By moving into software product development, I now get to bring that scientific, hypothesis-driven mindset to solve problems with and for people while seeing the results on a much faster cycle. As it turns out, this problem-solving can be transferable to multiple industries, which has meant I’ve been able to work across a variety of spaces, including international development, sustainability, education, and now small business insurance!
So what brought you to Pathpoint?
The team is a highly collaborative, low-ego group. We are here to listen to our agents and ensure they can grow their businesses. The team maintains that spirit even as we have increased the number of agents we work with by nearly 10x over the last year. We all win when the focus is on ensuring small businesses can grow.
In your opinion, what makes Pathpoint different from other wholesalers?
Our superpower as a small company in this big, legacy industry is that we are highly customer-focused. Insurance is a relationship-driven industry, and we are here to combine the best of that - the compassionate listening to those who we serve - with swift and efficient solutions to cut through the often inefficient (and costly) status quo of back-and-forth emails and faxes.
"We all win when the focus is on ensuring small businesses can grow."
How would you describe Pathpoint’s impact on insurance?
We're setting a new precedent that, once we reach a certain size, will redefine the status quo for wholesale insurance. Echoing the above: We all win when the focus is on ensuring small businesses can grow.
You are part of the team that developed Mix and Match, offering agents multiple quote options for general liability and property from multiple carriers. What inspired your team to create this new feature?
A significant portion of submissions that agents bring to Pathpoint is for a packaged product where multiple lines of business are bound with one carrier. General liability and property coverage are perhaps the most commonly packaged lines of business in the small commercial space. However, with climate change and the hardening E&S market, it's becoming more difficult to find a single carrier that has an appetite across both lines of business, especially property because of the wildfire or storm/hurricane (wind) exposure. With a digital wholesale application, we can flip the script on that and efficiently prompt all carrier partners that offer either of these lines of business for quotes. This increases the likelihood that our agents can find competitive coverage and mix and match to meet their client's needs with the ease of submitting a single application.
"We're setting a new precedent that, once we reach a certain size, will redefine the status quo for wholesale insurance."
What have you discovered since launching Mix and Match?
At first, we started tackling the complex work of visually illustrating lines of business across carriers by drawing inspiration from other marketplaces that offer the spirit of mix and match (buying round-trip airline tickets, for example). However, the more we talked to agents about what works best for them we realized agents had this mental model that a packaged product-if available - is preferred. There are typically pricing incentives and paperwork simplicity to binding multiple lines with the same carrier. Given this, we pivoted to making those package options clearly available at the top of the “explore quotes” experience. It’s all about the experience intuitive for the agent.
What kind of feedback has Mix and Match received thus far?
It’s incredible, we’re seeing that most policies bound on mix and match accounts so far are for standalone policies. These policies wouldn’t have been as quick or possible to obtain in one application without mix and match.
Who benefits most from Mix and Match?
Ultimately, small businesses - our agents’ end clients - win by getting matched with competitive coverage that fits their needs, even more smoothly and quickly. These businesses need coverage to stay open. The faster we can enable agents to find coverage that meets their client’s needs, the more we all win.
"It’s all about making the experience intuitive for the agent."
Can you tell us what else your team has in store for Pathpoint users in terms of product updates?
We’re listening to our agents and adding appetite to the product lines that are most frequently requested — contractors, lessor’s risk, and property. More is to come soon!