Joshu

Who They Serve

Joshu helps teams bring insurance products to market rapidly and iterate on them easily using tools they're familiar with. They work with two segments: new insurers—usually MGAs—who are looking to launch a new product, and established insurers who want to experiment with new products or distribution channels. As a lightweight, product-agnostic platform built for quick iteration, it's particularly well suited to non-admitted lines. Admitted lines in the US are often highly regulated and may not move as fast as Joshu allows you to go.

When markets do move quickly, it's common for teams to rely on scrappy, ubiquitous office products like Excel and Word to get the job done. But those strategies aren't sustainable, secure, or scalable. On the other hand, it’s a slow process to transform Excel models and Word templates into a policy administration system and build a front end on top of it. Joshu offers the same speed to market as scrappy Office products and shared drives, but in a clean, production-ready SaaS solution purpose-built for insurance professionals by insurance professionals.

Joshu also helps you quickly stand up online user experiences: both D2C and agency channels, both internally (underwriters) and externally (insureds or agents), both quote-to-bind and the rest of the policy lifecycle. So here they appeal to two groups:

  • those who've never had a modern online front end (or they had it for agents but not consumers, or for quoting but not self-service, etc.);
  • and those who are quite used to modern front ends, but have never been able to iterate on them quickly and easily without development resources.

Lastly, Joshu leans on the affordable side among policy software platforms, if you’re budget-sensitive. We do not publish prices on our site for various reasons. (Details can vary between implementations, we prefer to allow the vendor to lead those conversations, etc.) But it's safe to say that Joshu aims to be affordable. This comes out both in their subscription fee and in professional services, since a lot is already implemented and configuration is significantly faster than with many alternatives.

What They Do

3 User Experiences

Joshu is designed around 3 distinct user experiences: for producers and insureds (“Joshu Stores”), for underwriters (“Underwriter Desk”), and for insurance product owners (“Joshu Builder”).

Insurance Product Owners

Insurance product owners implement products in Joshu Builder using the same Excel spreadsheets and Word docs they usually use to design them. To be clear, we don't mean the (also elegant and straightforward) approach of combining Excel-like formulas and imported look-ups. Instead, you upload your entire Excel-based rater and Word documents directly into the platform. Joshu can also integrate with non-Excel-based raters if needed.

These flows work much the way you might expect. Within your existing Excel rater, you set certain cells to be inputs and others to be outputs. In your MS Word forms, angle brackets designate dynamic fields. Everything else in your files stays the same.

You define the structure of your insurance product in a guided online experience: questions, question types, help text, field names. The field names you define are used in your rater and forms. None of this—rates, forms, or product structure—requires training. It's a guided user experience designed to be intuitive and discoverable.

You can have as many products as you like. Some can be active, and others in design. You can clone an existing product with a click and modify it to create a new version. And Joshu follows standard product versioning practices, so if you archive an existing product with its rates and forms, any policies written on it will stay on it till renewal.

Producers and Insureds

Producers and insureds use Joshu Stores to purchase and service insurance policies. Joshu Stores are just online portals. You can define as many stores as you want—if you want different brokerages to have custom flows, for example. Each store can sell and service one or more products, and each product can show up in one or more stores.

Portals are white-labeled and set up for easy branding. Upload logos, specify fonts and colors, choose D2C or broker-facing, associate it with one or more products, and you're on your way.

If you’re delivering an embedded product, see JSON APIs and webhooks below.

Underwriters

Underwriters have a dedicated online UX in Joshu, what we'd usually call an underwriting workbench. Underwriters can approve or decline quotes on products they're assigned to. Or they can customize values within prescribed limits, or request further documentation. An underwriter experience is especially important for non-admitted lines, which are underwritten manually more often than their admitted counterparts.

You don't have to use an underwriter for a given quote or endorsement. Joshu supports straight-through processing as well, with digitally automated rating and underwriting decisions. That way you can save your underwriters' time for quotes that genuinely require human intervention.

It's also not a binary choice—either automated (no underwriters) or manual (and any underwriter will do). Some underwriting decisions require more skill and experience than others. This is handled in Joshu using authority levels.

Underwriting authority also works as you'd expect:

  • If Alice the Underwriter has an authority level of 3, she can see and approve any quotes that require an authority level of 1, or 2, or 3.
  • A quote that requires a level of 2 can be underwritten and approved by Alice, but not by Bob, whose authority level on the product is only a 1.
  • You approve a quote automatically by setting its authority level to 0, or deny it by setting the authority level to -1.

You set the authority level of each quote in your Excel rater.

UX Remarks

You'll find this three-part structure throughout Joshu's website and marketing: insurance product owners, underwriters, and producers/insureds. Each one even has a designated branded color on Joshu pages and infographics.

The marketing schema suggests a refreshing principle: that your product owner and underwriters deserve well designed user experiences as much as your brokers and insureds. From demos we've seen, Joshu does seem to follow this maxim. And why not? Why should our insureds get all the fun?

JSON APIs and Webhooks

Each product and store you define in Joshu automatically generates its own full set of JSON APIs and webhooks.

APIs will help you with anything upstream that you build for distribution. If you build an integration with a channel partner, for example, and that partner wants to hook into your API, you now have an API to give them. If your product is embedded, share this same API with the team building your delivery front end. After the moment of purchase, distribution partners and insureds have a ready-made front end in the Joshu platform to cancel or change their policy.

Joshu writes your API documentation automatically as well. You can share its dedicated URL when your partner's developers or your front-end team asks for your docs. Documentation is updated in real time anytime you modify your product.

Webhooks will help you with any integrations downstream, say with a separate system of record or database. When a policy is sold, for example, or an endorsement is added, Joshu sends notifications by webhook. Webhooks are updated and documented in real time as well.

How to Work With Them

Getting started with Joshu is straightforward. They offer a free trial long enough to dive in, build your own product from scratch, create one or more branded stores, and show them to whoever you need to gain buy-in. You can also reach out via their website for a quick introductory chat or sign up for a custom demo.

It's worth calling out why this process is simpler than comparable processes with Joshu's peers. It's not inherently better or worse, but it follows their product design.

  • You don't need a technical business analyst or IT with Joshu, only an insurance product owner. The product's designed to be one step less technical than other non-IT policy software solutions.
  • Joshu doesn't ask you to let them help with the initial implementation—though they're happy to do so. The Joshu UX is designed to make it easy enough to do even the initial setup yourself—like Dropbox, Monday.com, or any other popular SaaS product, using help text and guided tooltips. But the team can also configure your initial implementation for you. Or they can configure part of your product, showing you how as they go, and let you take it from there. Either way they're here to support.
  • Lastly, you'll find there isn't a steep learning curve with Joshu, so you won't need to ask for extensive training. Joshu provides support, of course, and their support includes explaining anything that's unclear. But the platform's designed to explain itself—for product owners as much as for brokers and underwriters. You wouldn't expect to have to train a broker on the quote flow, because the UX is designed to be clear and intuitive. Joshu wants the same for your product owner.

Joshu will work with you if you'd like to explore any innovative integrations. This can take extra time for discovery, design, build, and delivery. This is true at onboarding or at any later time.

Otherwise, a typical initial implementation with Joshu takes 2-4 weeks for an average product with an engaged client. Products with very long application forms or very complex rating and forms may take longer.

Products

We asked Joshu what products their customers are currently actively selling or placing. If you don't see your product on the list, we always recommend reaching out! This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of what Joshu supports.

Customers Actively Selling or Placing Insurance

  • BOP
  • Commercial Property
  • Contingent Liability*
  • Cyber
  • General Liability
  • Management Liability
  • Occupational Accident*
  • Professional Liability
  • Specialty: Solar, Cannabis Program (product liability and others), Event, etc.*

Asterisks indicate vendor write-ins.

No Current Customers

  • Accident & Health
  • Commercial Auto
  • Embedded Insurance
  • Inland Marine
  • Life
  • Parametric Insurance
  • Personal Auto
  • Personal Home
  • Pet
  • Rental Property Owners
  • Renters
  • Travel Insurance
  • Umbrella
  • Usage-Based Insurance
  • Workers Comp

Locations

We asked Joshu where their customers are currently actively selling or placing insurance. If you don't see your region on the list, we recommend reaching out to ask! This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of where Joshu will do business.

Customers Actively Selling or Placing Insurance

  • United States

No Current Customers

  • Canada
  • Latin America
  • Europe
  • Australia/Asia/Pacific
  • Africa