Arden Insurance Services LLC — founded in 2016 — specializes in residential condominium association insurance. Insuring over 100,000 buildings and one million condo association members, the employees at Arden are experts in their niche and through their intelligent use of technology, the team writes over $250M in premium with just 32 employees.
“We strive to be the first-choice underwriters for condo associations by providing the best protection at a reasonable price,” said Brian Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Arden.
Unlike insurtech companies that develop technology first then scramble to find an application for it in the insurance industry, Arden took a different approach. Their priority was to create an exceptional insurance business, focusing on delivering a superior product, unparalleled customer service for brokers, and competitive pricing. Only after they built a strong foundation did they ask how technology could enhance their operations and solve pain points.
“It’s important to find the need — identify an area of friction — and act accordingly to find the solution for it,” said Sophia Stuart, Arden’s marketing lead.
While Arden is one of the most tech-forward companies in the field, their philosophy is still that the best underwriters are people — not machines. For this reason, their technological focus is on automating manual, repetitive tasks to unlock time for their underwriters. For instance, their algorithms conduct initial screening to determine whether insurance submissions meet their underwriting appetite, flag when their portfolio changes (e.g. changes in frequency or severity trends), and track how claims are performing against prior years.
As a result, Arden monitors its portfolio in real time. While it’s impossible for human beings to track such changes 24/7, a machine can.
“The insurance market is too dynamic to manage risk with monthly or quarterly updates. You have to be proactive today,” said Louise Tebelekian, Arden’s Chief Underwriter. “And the cost of computing power has dropped so substantially that we can use world-class tech tools, which levels the playing field.”
Arden, Accelerant’s first U.S. Member, wrote their first policy with Accelerant in January 2021. They began with E&S lines, then added Admitted, and now they have 4,000 active policies between the two. Arden had 3 carriers prior to Accelerant, but it was Accelerant’s strong Member relationships, excellent service, and unique focus on programs that supported Arden’s quick growth.
As weather gets more volatile — making risk more uncertain, more expensive, and overall more difficult to write — leveraging technology becomes even more important.
Arden saw this predicament firsthand when it came to underwriting wildfire risk. Many insurers pulled back from wildfire-exposed properties after record setting wildfires in 2017-2020.
“Imagine your condo association could easily secure insurance since the 70s, and suddenly, the price increases exponentially with limited coverage. No one budgets for that,” explained Brian Cohen.
Arden sought to address this issue in partnership with Accelerant. In mid-2023, they developed the Wildfire Exposed Program. Through it, they offer two products to provide the most comprehensive coverage for wildfire exposed condo associations at a better price than existing competitors.
“Most carriers would have walked away. We reached out to Accelerant with an idea and instead of saying no, they embraced our idea and we collaborated to launch the product,” Brian said. “We’re committed to staying ahead of the market, and we couldn’t have done it without Accelerant’s help.”
Carey Dooley, Arden’s Chief Product Officer, encourages Members to likewise dive deeply into a market and develop technology that adapts to its changes.
“We succeeded because we hyper-focused on one niche, ensured we were experts on it, and applied our knowledge to an evolving landscape,” Carey said.