California-based niche sports memorabilia MGA, Stadium Insurance, needed an innovative, bespoke insurance system to launch its customer-first offering. Insly impressed due to its flexibility, open-minded approach, and strong communication from the team.
“Every person we’ve worked with at Insly has been very open to what we’re doing and hearing our needs,” says Dan Lorber, Co-Founder and CEO, Stadium Insurance. “We’ve been very fortunate they’ve been willing to work with us and help us solve any issues along the way.”
An untapped opportunity in the sports memorabilia market
With over 25 years in the insurance industry, as an insurance agent and broker, Dan Lorber’s real passion has always been sports memorabilia. Having collected baseball cards as a child, this evolved into autographed memorabilia and then game-used sports memorabilia. Eventually, he decided to combine his collecting hobby with his insurance expertise to start his own business – Stadium Insurance.
With his ear to the ground in the collecting community, Lorber had spotted a need for insurance that would protect valuable memorabilia items, which can be worth millions of dollars. He realised he was perfectly placed to develop a solution.
“People from my network reached out to me with my insurance background to ask: How do we insure these things?” he explains. “We’re worried about them being covered in transit, during shipping, or if the house burns down. Memorabilia often isn’t covered under homeowner’s insurance, so we’ve built something for the modern-day sports collector, which fits what our clients are looking for.”
A complex and evolving landscape
Sports memorabilia is a highly complex area to insure, due to the the challenge of valuing unusual items and dealing with a scarcity of market information. Further complexity comes from variations in how collectors store items, and how long they keep them, which can impact the risk involved.
“When pricing a product like this, you need to consider how many people are storing it in a vault in their house and how many are carrying it around at different trade shows in a suitcase, or shipping cards across the country,” Lorber explains. “If somebody has an item in a safe in their house, the odds of it being stolen are a lot less than while taking it to trade shows or buying and selling constantly.”
Building tech-first insurance
Stadium Insurance aimed to help solve some of these issues by creating a product that reflects the way collectors operate today, and the risks involved in activities spanning online trading, rapid trading, and shipping. To meet these needs, and customer demands for a convenient, dynamic solution, Stadium has focused on building a direct-to-consumer offering, with a mobile app, making it easy for customers to buy and update their insurance quickly, when and how it suits them.
“A lot of collectors felt it would be a burden to insure their items because they would be constantly contacting their agent to make changes to the policy,” explains Lorber. “We put the power in the consumer’s hands by allowing them to simply take a photo of an item, catalogue it in our mobile app, and have it covered in minutes, whether it’s midnight on a Saturday or Sunday or they’re at a trade show.”
Finding the right technology partner
Stadium’s focus on innovation and customer experience was front and centre when the team set out to find a technology partner to build its back-end insurance system. They also knew they would need some handholding to turn their vision into reality.
“We’re collectors and insurance people, we’re not tech people,” says Lorber. “When we were searching for a company, we wanted someone new and innovative. We didn’t want something right off the shelf because our whole premise was to be tech-forward.”
Taking a customer-first approach to every aspect of its offering, Stadium needed a partner with technology and insurance knowledge, who was comfortable working in uncharted territory to deliver ambitious plans.
“We wanted our product to be different from others out there,” continues Lorber. “With plans such as incorporating video technology and a mobile app, we were looking for a company that was open and receptive to our ideas. That’s how we chose Insly.”
What makes Insly different?
Now up and running with the Insly system, Dan and the Stadium team have been most impressed with the ease of working and communicating with Insly.
“Every person we’ve worked with at Insly has been very open to what we’re doing and hearing our needs,” he says. “We’ve been very fortunate that they’ve been willing to work with us and help solve issues along the way. Because we’re a new MGA, we’re learning as well.”
As Insly’s first US-based client, Stadium was also impressed with how the system and team adapted to a new market, with its specific ways of working.
“Things are different here from how they are done in other markets and other countries,” he says. “Insly has been able to help us along the way to correct those differences.”
Big plans for the future
As a startup company, Stadium Insurance has been focused on getting up and running, primarily using Insly’s policy management module. However, the team envisages expanding its use of the platform going forward.
“The management system is the biggest piece of the puzzle that’s been very useful,” explains Lorber. “We’ve gotten familiar with the system and its capabilities, and every day we’re learning more about how we can use it to better serve our customers.”
Now the focus is on growth, including raising capital to “put gas on the fire” to accelerate growth and win market share from the competition. Plus, the company is exploring expanding its distribution channels and even its product offerings.
“We’re working on building partnerships within sports memorabilia, where we can embed our offering on different platforms – that will be a big part of our growth and journey,” says Lorber. “Plus, we’re keeping an eye out for other niche markets for collectors, whether it’s coins, comics, wine, bourbon… We don’t want to spread ourselves too thinly, but if we find a need and the market size is big enough, we’ll definitely look at diving into other areas.”
