Insurance Company Start Up Success: A How-To Guide from the President of TypTap Insurance

May 15, 2020

Kevin Mitchell is Senior Vice President at HCI Group, Inc. He is also President of TypTap Insurance Company, a subsidiary of HCI Group. Earlier, he worked at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. He is a graduate of Bowling Green State University.

In his 2,307 word interview, exclusively with the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Mitchell gives detailed background on how his insurance company started up and expanded.

“The benefit of this approach is that we’re able to pre-underwrite the state of Florida and determine which policies we do or don’t want before homeowners even approach us for a quote, and it’s allowed us to truly manage exposure and to understand where are areas around the state to focus on for driving profitable results.

And with the profitable results, we’re able to maintain continuity in terms and conditions, to have consistency from a rating standpoint and to allow our agent partners to build a long-term, stable book of business. Even though it’s an insurtech company, we do work with agent partners.

That brings us to the current day. HCI Group is the corporate umbrella. We have these four main divisions that we feel are diverse yet complementary.

And now, we march into 2020. Homeowners Choice, our first insurance division, had a transaction in February of this year, acquiring a book of business from a company called Anchor Property & Casualty. We’ve assumed that book of business, and that continues to be folded into Homeowners Choice.

TypTap continues to grow its homeowners and flood insurance book of business. Greenleaf is constantly evaluating different opportunities from a real estate standpoint.

The Exzeo technology division is constantly trying to improve and refine, whether it’s underwriting and data or user features and functions from the insurance agent side. And then, we have Claddaugh, which is there to give a helping hand and in case we need it from a reinsurance perspective.”

Even the global pandemic has not slowed the company down:

“In our headquarters city of Tampa, Florida, everyone has been working from home since early March. But because of the technology and systems that we built, our agents and policyholders haven’t noticed the difference from a customer service claims communication standpoint.”

This will support the investors in HCI:

“…make sure that our shareholders understand that we’re working to see that the dividend remains safe and in a strong position, tied to solid cash flow. And since we just did the acquisition and a transition of policies in February, that was our big portion of growth for the year..”

Get the full detail by reading the entire 2,307 word interview, exclusively with the Wall Street Transcript.