Author: KINETIC

Developing and maintaining strong relations with agents and brokers is a cornerstone of success for the new Kinetic Insurance business. We need a seasoned leader with well-established relationships to present our innovative offering to the markets we serve, which is why we’re thrilled to announce JoseCruz as our new Vice President of Business Development for the west region.

Jose will lead business development and broker distribution in California, Arizona and Nevada. He brings over 15 years of commercial insurance experience to the team as well as a network of high performing sales producers that represent several of the nation’s Top 100 commercial brokers.

Jose recently shared his thoughts on joining Kinetic Insurance, the value of risk mitigation and why he believes the future of the industry will be driven by technology.

Q. Tell us why you wanted to join the Kinetic Team?

A. What Kinetic is offering is the first real innovation I’ve seen in workers’ compensation, and I wanted to be a part of this revolutionary approach where midmarket companies can use state-of-the-art tech and data gathered from their workforce to anticipate and prevent risks before they turn into claims. I believe it can transform the market and fundamentally change the way businesses operate.

The energy of the Kinetic Insurance team also really excited me! Led by Gerritt Graham, Ronnie O’Dell and Steven Shafer, it’s a highly growth-driven team with decades of experience leading businesses to success. Being a part of this dynamic company, and helping to pioneer a proactive approach to workers’ comp insurance, felt like the perfect next step for me.

Q. With such a competitive market, what do you think will attract brokers to the Kinetic program?

A. Differentiation is one thing. Kinetic is offering something new and different that will help brokers stand out in a crowded marketplace. Furthermore, what’s behind that distinction has true value for their clients. With a Kinetic policy, brokers bring real risk mitigation to customers. Companies receive and deploy our wearable tech, which is proven to reduce injury frequency by 50-60%. And our policy is backed by Nationwide, one of the largest and strongest national brands in insurance.

The other big attractor is achievablepremium savings. With access to our injury-preventing tech, clients are empowered to actually collect significant dividends – it’s not just a marketing gimmick. When companies deploy the Kinetic wearable among their workforces, injuries go down; in turn, claims go down. This also improves experience modification scores, leading to lowered annual premium costs.

Q. Where do you see Kinetic in 10 years?

A. This is the future of insurance. Policies that come with technology that benefits the carrier and the policyholder, that lower policy costs and losses – this will be mainstream for workers’ compensation. I see Kinetic leading that revolution.

The company was founded and built upon a mission to improve the lives of frontline workers and that’s what we’ll continue striving to do. Over the next decade, Kinetic has a goal to reduce one million injuries. We’ll achieve this by outfitting more workers with our injury-preventing tech, making it more accessible to mid-market companies by offering it with workers comp policies and leading a widely-adopted, proactive approach to safety management.

We’ll also continue to innovate, finding new ways to bring even more value to workers, policy holders and carriers – from adding features that reduce more types of injuries to identifying more avenues of cost savings for our customers.

We’re excited to welcome three new additions to the Kinetic team! Ronnie O’Dell, Steven Schafer and Gerritt Graham will lead Kinetic Insurance, our new insurance offering in partnership with Nationwide. Kinetic Insurance provides top-of-the-line workers’ compensation coverage to employers in safety-critical industries.

The team has begun at full speed, pioneering a new approach to worker safety and insurance with a proactive policy offering that directly equips policyholders with wearable tech that’s verified to reduce injuries and losses.

Please meet our new leaders, who recently shared their thoughts on how Kinetic is expanding the benefits of wearable safety tech to more employers, to increase industry adoption.

As EVP of Growth Strategy, Gerritt Graham leads go-to-market strategy marketing and distribution. Gerritt is a seasoned growth executive with more than 20 years experience leading sales and marketing organizations across the financial services vertical. Notably, he was the Chief Commercial Officer for Corvus Insurance Holdings, Inc., leading that market to over 100M in premium.

“The innovation happening in the Insurtech space is amazing and is transforming an area of financial services that has been a laggard in tech adoption. Kinetic is bringing to market exactly what every insurance carrier should be, best-in-class policies that deliver risk transfer for the insured alongside technology that mitigates the risk for both parties.”

Vice President Ronnie O’Dell leads business development and broker relations. Ronnie brings more than two decades of business development experience to his new role, most recently as VP of Distribution for CopperPoint of California (Formerly Pacific Compensation Ins. Company), a $380M mono-line workers’ compensation business unit of Copperpoint Insurance Companies based in Arizona.

Vice President Ronnie O’Dell leads business development and broker relations. Ronnie brings more than two decades of business development experience to his new role, most recently as VP of Distribution for CopperPoint of California (Formerly Pacific Compensation Ins. Company), a $380M mono-line workers’ compensation business unit of Copperpoint Insurance Companies based in Arizona.

Steven Schafer is serving as Vice President of Underwriting. Steven has a proven track record of building and leading profitable insurance organizations, having served as Underwriting Leader of Specialty  Programs for EMPLOYERS, and before that, as AVP of Underwriting for Pacific Compensation Insurance Company.

“We want to provide every customer with best-in-class workers’ compensation coverage along with a risk management solution that’s been proven to reduce workplace injuries. We’re currently having a lot of success reducing injuries and creating safer work environments for our fortune 500 clients. We want to offer the same technology to the middle market customer so they can experience the same benefits. What’s exciting and unique is the customer receives this technology with their workers’ comp policy at no additional cost!”

Our commitment to foster safe environments for the industrial workforce is expanding. Beyond providing employers proven safety technology to reduce injuries, we’re now also providing one of the first technology-led, proactive workers comp insurance offerings in the industry. 

Read on to learn more from co-founder and CEO Haytham Elhawary, including why he broadened the company’s focus to include insurance, and how he believes it will benefit both employers and frontline workers.

How does the new KINETIC Insurance workers comp product work?

I’m so excited to announce this new offering! In partnership with Nationwide’s E&S Specialty division, KINETIC Insurance is acting as a program manager to provide workers compensation insurance to employers in safety-critical industries. Our team works directly with KINETIC Insurance appointed agents to offer top-of-the-line coverage from one of the largest and strongest national brands in insurance.

What makes this new policy offering unique?

Traditionally, workers comp has been a reactive process, with employers trying to determine what went wrong after a claim was filed. But we’re taking a proactive approach by helping change the way workers move on a daily basis to prevent workplace injuries before they happen. We do this by equipping policyholders with our wearable tech, which is proven to reduce injuries by 50-60%, at no extra cost. 

With this tech-driven, proactive approach, companies experience both a safer workforce and premium savings. Workers wearing the devices have less ergonomic injuries, in turn the company files less claims and policyholder premiums go down. We also have a dividend plan to reward policyholders with low losses.

Why did you expand into providing workers comp insurance?

Our mission is to improve the lives of frontline workers – in fact, we have a goal to reduce one million injuries in the next decade. And we believe expanding how many workers wear our product gets us closer to that goal. My hope is that by pairing our wearables with workers comp policies we make the tech more accessible and affordable to companies who otherwise may not have the resources for this kind of safety program. 

While Fortune 500 companies have been successfully using wearables to maximize their safety programs, to build their safety culture and to reduce their injury rates, mid-market companies have not had the same access. By including it in workers comp policies, which all companies have already budgeted for, more frontline workers will get to wear the device. They will feel better and be more productive, which ultimately benefits everyone. 

How did KINETIC’s partnership with Nationwide come about?

From the early days at KINETIC, Nationwide really believed in our vision of leveraging the latest advances in wearables and AI to prevent injuries in the workplace. That belief led their venture capital arm to invest in the company on numerous occasions. So when we decided to go into insurance, they were an ideal and natural partner.

Our policyholders can have peace of mind with a policy backed by a big national brand, and they get benefits like superior claims handling and easy online account access. And our appointed agents are able to offer a Nationwide-backed policy that provides A+ rated paper, brand recognition and top-notch loss control.

Who can purchase a KINETIC Insurance policy?

We’re specializing in a wide range of safety-critical industries, where our wearable tech has significantly reduced injuries among frontline workers. This includes wholesale and warehousing, parcel delivery, light manufacturing, auto dealers, healthcare (specifically nursing homes and assisted living), restaurants and agriculture. We’ll write workers comp in all states, with our initial launch in California.

A leading U.S. actuarial consulting firm recently drew a clear line between the deployment of KINETIC wearable technology and reduced workplace injuries and reduced lost work days. After analyzing operational data from before and after the implementation of the Reflex in various industries, Perr&Knight verified the device supports improvement in areas including injury reduction, lost work days and claims costs. 

Key findings of the actuarial analysis show a definitive impact on workplace incidents with the use of the Reflex wearable, including:

A Reduction of Injury Frequency

A review of data by industry and type of worker supported a correlation between the rate of high-risk posture rates and the frequency of strains and sprains. 

Manufacturing industry frequency of strain and sprain claims declined 49.5%

from 1.08 claims per 200,000 hours worked without the device to 0.54 claims per 200,000 hours worked with the device. 

Warehouse worker frequency of strain and sprain claims declined by 58.8%

from 2.99 claims per 200,000 hours worked without the device to 1.23 claims per 200,000 hours worked with the device.

A statistical test was also conducted to determine if the impact on all claim frequency was significant. After performing the test in a population not using the Reflex device and one using the device, results supported a statistically significant decrease to claim frequency when using the Reflex.

A Reduction of Lost Work Days

For participating businesses that provided data on the number of days employees were either absent from work or limited to light duty, all showed a reduction in the rate of absences.

The percentage of work days missed is reduced by 72%

from 1.1% of work days missed without the device to 0.3% of work days missed with the use of the device.

Actuarial analysis details: Operational customer data provided included counts of OSHA recordable incidents, sprains and strains and days of missed work and covered more than 15 million hours worked across various industries and over 2.1 million hours of KINETIC wearable hours.

To analyze your injury data and learn more about reducing injuries, lost work days and claims costs with the Reflex wearable, please reach out to us at info@wearkinetic.com.