Like many people in insurance, I never thought I would work in insurance, even though I grew up surrounded by the industry. 

My dad worked in insurance almost his entire career, and the local independent agency he worked at became like a huge extended family. My first outing into the real world as a baby was at their annual winter holiday party. I knew which department had the best snacks for whatever craving I was having (usually Group Benefits, FYI). 

I also had one of my first jobs there, which was to type up dozens of documents–on an IBM typewriter… in the year 2008. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised I’ve found a career working in startup insurtech, and why I’m so glad to be the newest member of the Rainbow team. 

Rainbow is a small commercial insurance provider that is transforming insurance into a helpful, risk-preventing force for small businesses, starting with restaurants. Our mission is to help prevent claims for policyholders using data and individualized unique user experiences. We even reward small business owners for acting prudently and putting safety first.

Rainbow offers a broad appetite in the foodservice space with the ability to customize key restaurant-specific enhancements and coverages. We’ve built a digital quote-to-bind experience, with bindable quotes returned instantly. 

Rainbow commits to expedited underwriting responses, with most referral decisions in under one hour, as well as real-time customer service chat. The Rainbow team is made up of dedicated commercial insurance professionals with expertise in the verticals they cover. 

Rainbow agents are able to offer credits when the establishment demonstrates certain prudent business practices or loss control, and request underwriting review when additional adjustments are needed.

Here at Rainbow, we are proud to distribute our products through independent insurance agents, not direct to consumer through our website. We offer agents competitive commission rates as well as profit sharing. Rainbow agents can earn preferred status through top performance, providing increased compensation and enhanced underwriting consideration. Restaurants benefit from this partnership with independent agents, as they are able to receive personalized attention and tailored insurance products that help prevent claims and mitigate risk. 

With Rainbow, by taking proactive steps towards safety and loss prevention, restaurants can not only protect themselves but also reap the rewards of lower insurance premiums.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our End of Summer giveaway! As always, we appreciate Rainbow agents commitment to finding your restaurant clients the best coverage, while making this giveaway a success. 

Rainbow offered two chances to win the ultimate companion for keeping things chill:

Prize 1: YETI Tundra 45 Hard Cooler

Prize 2: YETI Panga 28L Waterproof Backpack

The winner of the YETI Tundra 45 Hard Cooler is Matt Mueller over at Village Insurance. Woohoo!

The winner of the YETI Panga 28 L Waterproof Backpack is MJ over at Ambassador Insurance. Yay MJ!

Congrats Matt and MJ! Enjoy your YETI gear.

Keep an eye out for upcoming promotions and giveaways–we appreciate your partnership and hard work. 

Log in to start a quote here.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our Business Owner’s Policy (BOP) for restaurants in Texas! 

Rainbow helps restaurant owners effectively navigate the evolving landscape of the industry and make informed decisions about insurance coverage, and is 100% built for restaurants. 

Rainbow agents offer restaurant owners: 

• Diverse payment plan options that fit every restaurant’s needs, including monthly, annual, and the industry’s first Pay-As-You-Go BOP
• Discounted premiums for demonstrating safe business practices
• Credits for affinity memberships that promote improved loss control
• Free access to training and safety resources

Rainbow agents empower restaurant owners to evolve their operations to address the new set of risks present in the space and navigate the shift to digital technology. Rainbow can work with a restaurant owners’ existing agent or refer them to one of our preferred restaurant experts. 

If you’re an agent looking to partner with Rainbow, get appointed here. You’ll be connected with Brandi, Rainbow’s resident Texan and manager of business development.

Summary

Tony Cañas from the Profiles in Risk podcast chats with Bobby Touran, Co-Founder at Rainbow. Rainbow is a modern underwriting company focused on small businesses. They focus on underwriting by being very specialized, currently in the food and beverage industry, primarily restaurants.

About Bobby

Bobby Touran is changing the business of restaurant insurance with UseRainbow.com, where he and his team are building custom insurance products for the restaurant industry and proudly using independent agents for distribution.

About the Profiles in Risk Podcast

Insurance Nerds’ Profiles in Risk podcast aims to bring an informative, fun and sometimes irreverent look at the insurance industry. Profiles in Risk is the only recurring podcast dedicated to Insurance Careers, InsurTech Startups and Analysis of Insurance Current Events.

Summary

Listen to this podcast from Insurance Nerds featuring Rainbow CEO, Bobby Touran. Bobby is a serial Entrepreneur, he and Broker Brett from Insurance Nerds get into the restaurant industry, their shared experience in the space, new innovative risk management ideas specific to the restaurant industry, and the startup environment in Summer 2023.

About Bobby

Bobby Touran is changing the business of restaurant insurance with UseRainbow.com, where he and his team are building custom insurance products for the restaurant industry and proudly using independent agents for distribution.

About Insurance Nerds

Insurance Nerds' co-founders, Carly Burnham and Tony Cañas, worked at Nationwide Insurance where they met while helping to build a new chapter of the Gen Y Associate Resource Group (young professional group) in the Des Moines, Iowa office. They used the Gen Y ARG and Yammer, Nationwide’s in-house social network, to help young insurance professionals grow in their career and to write about the future of the industry. When they both moved on to other companies, they missed the work of helping fellow insurance professionals grow and decided to continue it at an industry wide scale, and thus, in late 2014, InsNerds was born.

We started Rainbow with a mission to improve small commercial insurance, and by extension improve the operations of local entrepreneurs. We set out to develop customer-centric insurance that rewards operators for putting safety first, with pricing that automatically evolves with a business’s natural ups and downs. Our first offering is an admitted business owner’s policy (BOP) tailored specifically for the restaurant industry. 

Overall, our approach builds on 4 key pillars:

• Focusing on preventing and avoiding claims, because claims aren’t good for anyone.
• Modernizing insurance by redeveloping the core parts of an insurance transaction, and improving affordability for insureds (business owners) through tailored coverages.
• Empowering small businesses with the resources and guidance to run a safer business, and rewarding them for taking steps to improve their safety.
• Being the easiest and most pleasant market for the agents we work with.

We strive to offer the best end-to-end experience in the industry for small commercial insurance, and our software engineering goes well beyond quote, bind and issue capabilities. Under the hood, our software delivers 2 unique features to all of our customers - with claims prevention and tailored coverage always top of mind:

1. Rainbow Rewards

We believe that well-run businesses are that way because of strong management, and we want to reward these businesses for selecting Rainbow. Policyholders that choose to participate in Rainbow Rewards complete a simple self-inspection of their premises in exchange for a policy credit and complimentary access to helpful training and safety materials. Behind the scenes is our proprietary form of loss control, which has been built to help avoid losses and is a cornerstone of our day-to-day thinking. 

2. Pay-As-You-Go

Observing the popularity of Pay-As-You-Go Workers’ Compensation, we have launched the industry’s first Pay-As-You-Go BOP — an annual policy that flexes the monthly premium up or down based on sales data we obtain from the business’s POS or accounting provider. So if a business has a slower month, it seems reasonable that they would owe less in insurance premium for that same time period. The end result is peace of mind for the business owner that their insurance is adaptive to their needs, and less administrative work for the policyholder and their agent.

As with any successful business, everything starts with great people. With the support of world-class investors and partners, Rainbow’s team of experienced insurance and technology operators has been quietly building software and insurance products for almost 18 months now, and we can’t wait to hear what you think about everything! 

We are Rainbow! 

Shalom, Jamie, Bobby

‍

The first Pay-As-You-Go BOP

Introducing the industry’s first Business Owner’s Policy (BOP) with an annual term billed on a Pay-As-You-Go monthly basis that requires no upfront premium deposit. By connecting your point-of-sale or accounting system to Rainbow, you ensure your general liability insurance premiums are automatically and appropriately priced, based on your monthly sales levels. 

We provide protection with industry-tailored coverage and lower monthly premiums during periods of seasonality or general business slow downs. During periods of growth, you can be confident you’re paying the exact policy premium required for the coverage you need. Even better, we reduce the need for time consuming year end audits.

How do we price your insurance premiums every month?

With Pay-As-You-Go policies, the premium charged for certain general liability coverages will change each month, as your total sales fluctuates. Premiums charged for property coverages (like business personal property and building) remain fixed throughout the policy term.  As such, any change in the total monthly premium is directly attributable to changes in premium for general liability coverage. 

To support a Pay-As-You-Go policy, we require verifiable sales reporting from the policyholder on a monthly basis.  There are three ways to send us your sales data:

• a direct (API) integration with your Point-of-Sale (POS) or cloud accounting provider (coming soon!)
• automated email reporting from your Point-of-Sale (POS) or cloud accounting provider
• self-reporting by the establishment

Reporting sales: Direct API integration (coming soon) 

Reporting sales this way is by far the easiest.  If you use a POS or accounting provider that Rainbow has an integration with already, just follow the steps below:

• Login to your Rainbow dashboard
• Click Integrations on the left nav bar
• Select your POS/accounting provider if it is listed
• Login to your provider following the steps on screen

And voila! You’ve now connected your POS/accounting service to Rainbow, and your Pay-As-You-Go BOP policy is fully set up.

Reporting sales: Automated email reporting

You may be able to send automated email reporting to Rainbow directly from your provider.  For example, automated daily sales email reporting is available through:

• Toast (Instructions to set this up here)
• FocusPOS (Instructions to set this up here)
• QuickBooks (Instructions to set this up here)

If you know that your POS/accounting provider supports automated email reports, get started by emailing us at support@userainbow.com requesting a unique Pay-As-You-Go email address and we will be glad to help you out.

Once you set up automated daily or monthly emails to come to Rainbow, you’re all set! Nothing else is required.

Reporting sales: Self-reporting

If you are unable to report sales to Rainbow through automated emails, you’re still eligible for a Pay-As-You-Go policy!  To keep the policy in good standing, you must provide Rainbow with a verifiable sales report every reporting period. We accept the following verifiable sales reports:

• PDF sales reports exported directly from your POS/accounting provider
• P&L or general ledger reports exported directly from your accounting provider
• Sales reports in email format that originated from your POS/accounting provider

Unfortunately we cannot accept: 

• Screenshots or pictures of sales reports
• User-reported sales either via email or over the phone

Before generating your sales report to send to Rainbow, you must use a date range that matches your policy’s monthly payment period.  This is generally always the 30 day period after your last premium bill receipt.

Again, get started by emailing us at support@userainbow.com noting that you’re requesting a unique Pay-As-You-Go email address and verification of the correct reporting window and we will be happy to confirm this for you! 

Are you an insurance agent? Get appointed now.

If you’re an agent and want to learn more about Rainbow Insurance and get appointed, click here.

As an appointed agent, you benefit from a flexible, easy-to-navigate digital platform that is backed by live underwriters and can quote and bind a policy online in 5 minutes or less. You can eliminate the tedium of online quoting with a streamlined submission process and instant issuance of policies and COIs. Plus, Rainbow offers competitive profit share plans, starting as low as $100k in gross written premium, for appointed agents that consistently write new lines of business using the platform.

A typical BOP policy is based on estimates

Traditionally, a small business or restaurant looking for business insurance would work with their agent to purchase a commercial multi-peril, or Business Owner’s Policy (BOP), based on estimated information.  

Generally, what key information is estimated? For restaurants or foodservice establishments, it’s:

• total annual sales or annual receipts,
• total liquor or alcohol sales as a percent of annual sales; and,
• total sales from delivery as a percent of annual sales.

This information is required during quoting as it plays a large part in determining the ultimate general liability component of the total premium the business pays.  Because the information is estimated, it is always subject to audit by the insurance carrier.  Premium audits:

• are inconvenient for the agent and business owner,
• can lead to the business paying more for their insurance at the end of the policy term; and,
• can lead to challenges with coverage renewals if the estimated information is deemed untruthful.

In an ever-evolving business environment, especially felt by restaurants coming out of the global pandemic, estimating 12 months’ worth of sales can be challenging.  We think it should be unnecessary.

The first Pay-As-You-Go BOP

Rainbow has introduced the first Business Owner’s Policy (BOP) to the market that is billed on a Pay-As-You-Go monthly basis. We achieve this by simply allowing a business to connect their POS or accounting system to Rainbow, so their general liability insurance premiums can be automatically priced, based on their monthly sales levels. We offer: 

• No upfront premium payments - you start paying your policy premiums at the end of the first month,
• No audits or back premiums; and,
• Peace of mind that the business only pays for the insurance that they need, and is covered for the full policy term, based on verified (not estimated) information. 

Pay for only the insurance you need

With a Rainbow Pay-As-You-Go BOP, the business has peace of mind that during economic downturns or periods of seasonality, their policy premium will decrease with lower sales levels.  Likewise, during periods of growth in total sales, the business can be confident that they are paying the exact policy premium required for the coverage they need.

Get a Rainbow Pay-As-You-Go BOP

If you are a small business owner in Texas or Arizona, talk to your insurance agent today about seeing a BOP quote from Rainbow Insurance, or simply click here.

Agents, get appointed now.

If you’re an agent and want to learn more about Rainbow Insurance and get appointed, click here.

As an appointed agent, you benefit from a flexible, easy-to-navigate digital platform that is backed by live underwriters and can quote and bind a policy online in 5 minutes or less. You can eliminate the tedium of online quoting with a streamlined submission process and instant issuance of policies and COIs. Plus, Rainbow offers competitive profit share plans, starting as low as $100k in gross written premium, for appointed agents that consistently write new lines of business using the platform.