Group Benefits Regional Sales Manager

Markets/Coverages: Amwins launches MGA illumin Specialty. October 6, 2026 Specialty insurance broker Amwins has launched illumin Specialty, a managing general agency (MGA) offering primary general liability and excess liability insurance. The MGA will work exclusively with wholesale brokers to focus on coverages for "challenging exposures across segments where market dislocation and technical complexity often complicate placement." The illumin Specialty team expects to finalize capacity and begin accepting new business in the fourth quarter. Rebecca Gitig, an industry veteran with more than 20 years' experience underwriting environmental and primary liability, will lead illumin Specialty as it focuses on coverages for "challenging exposures across segments where market dislocation and technical complexity often complicate placement." Joining Gitig are Randy Villanueva, senior vice president, and Meredith McLelland, senior vice president, both bring experience underwriting casualty. This addition expands Amwins Underwriting's in-house specialty casualty capabilities and its commitment to the excess and surplus lines (E&S) primary market. Was this article valuable? Interested in excess surplus? Get automatic alerts for this topic.

CoverForce launches Startup Program, enabling any company to launch a digital brokerage in days. Program combines carrier connectivity, preferred pricing, vetted market access partners, and educational resources into a single path to launch - compressing what has historically taken new brokerages years NEW YORK, NY - September 15, 2026 - CoverForce, the largest commercial insurance distribution network in the US, today launched the CoverForce Startup Program, giving early-stage founders everything they need to launch a digitally-enabled commercial insurance brokerage. The program is the first to combine preferred access to CoverForce's 60+ carrier integrations with vetted market access partners and educational resources built for founders new to the industry. For any company that has wanted to distribute commercial insurance, the requirements have always been the same. Form a licensed entity. Secure producer and entity licensing in every state of operation. Win carrier appointments one at a time. Then build and maintain point-to-point carrier connectivity from scratch. That manual-heavy process typically consumed months to years of time and significant capital before a single policy was bound, and required institutional knowledge that lived almost entirely inside legacy brokerages. The CoverForce Startup Program collapses that sequence. It supplies the infrastructure, preferred pricing, market access partners, and foundational guidance a new brokerage needs - turning a multi-year build into a launch measured in days. "With this type of offering, we believe any company can be an insurtech," said Cyrus Karai, Co-Founder and CEO of CoverForce. "This was not possible five years ago. Every piece - the carriers, the appointments, the technology, the knowledge - existed in isolation, but no one had assembled them into something a small team could actually pick up and use. That is what we have built, and we are starting with early-stage founders who stand to gain the most from it." Already Proven on the Platform The program formalizes what is already happening on CoverForce. Today, over a dozen digital brokerage startups are building on the platform already, with several going from kickoff to live multi-carrier quoting in under 30 days - a timeline that would previously have been measured in years. "If you're building an AI-native brokerage, you can't do much programmatically without API access to carriers - and building those integrations ourselves would have taken years. CoverForce gives us the API connectivity we need without having to build all that plumbing ourselves, so all of our engineering time can stay focused on our product." - Chris Dwyer, Co-founder and CTO, Rosella "Brokers have spent years digitizing the front end of the application process, only to rekey the same data into carrier portals on the back end. CoverForce closes that gap for us. One API connection puts real-time quotes in front of our agencies without us building and maintaining carrier integrations ourselves." - Jason Keck, Founder and CEO, Broker Buddha What the Program Includes Preferred startup pricing - access to CoverForce's quoting and binding infrastructure at pricing built for early-stage brokerages, scaling with application volume as a book of business grows. Carrier connectivity from day one - a single integration for real-time appetite, quoting, and binding across General Liability, Business Owners Policy, Workers' Compensation, Professional Liability, and more. Market access through vetted partners - appointments remain the largest bottleneck for any new brokerage. CoverForce has partnered with Amwins DAIS to give program members access at preferred rates, so they can quote and bind through established appointments while pursuing their own over time. Educational resources for founders - practical guides for teams new to the industry, covering commercial insurance terminology, guides for how to launch a digital brokerage, and more. Throughout, CoverForce remains neutral infrastructure: the company is not a broker of record and does not offer its own market access solution, and so does not compete with the brokerages, MGAs, or partners it serves. Program Availability The CoverForce Startup Program is open to applications today. In this first phase it is built for teams at the earliest stages: stealth, incubated, venture-backed, and accelerator-backed digital brokerages with newly formed books of business, as well as startups looking to add commercial insurance distribution to their existing offerings. Founders can review the program and apply at coverforce.com/solutions/startups. About CoverForce CoverForce is the commercial insurance distribution infrastructure platform, providing brokerages, wholesalers, MGAs, and startups with a single API for real-time quoting and binding across 60+ carriers. CoverForce was named to CB Insights' 2025 list of the 50 most innovative insurtech startups and is backed by leading investors including Nyca Partners, QED, and Insight Partners. The company is headquartered in New York City. Learn more at coverforce.com. Media Contact Kenny Tsai Head of Marketing, CoverForce [email protected]