In A Rapidly-Changing Market, National Brokerage Firm Woodruff Sawyer Partners With Tech Startup Stonebrook Risk To Disrupt Healthcare For Employers.
Founded in 1918, Woodruff Sawyer has partnered with clients to ensure innovation for over 100 years. The firm’s growth and sustainability are direct results of its ability to continually drive new solutions to the marketplace. This comes as no surprise, as the San-Francisco-based company’s DNA resides in the heart of Silicon Valley, where it remains a leading broker of technology-related insurance coverages.
Woodruff Sawyer has witnessed disruption within the realm of traditional healthcare as well. “There’s been an accelerated change in the insurance and healthcare industry because of COVID, with increasing emphasis on technology,” says Chris Kakel, a Partner with Woodruff Sawyer. “We’re passionate about these advancements in our industry so we can continue to be in a position to improve our service and products for our client base. Historically, the insurance industry has lagged with technology and innovation, but it is improving and moving to the front of the pack.”
Healthcare—and the traditional models it often operates in—is a space where Woodruff Sawyer works with many disruptive clients, including telehealth and alternative provider models. The wave of transformation in the delivery of healthcare is hitting small and medium-sized employers particularly hard. Furthermore, the burgeoning number of remote workers brings new challenges—and new opportunities.
One solution Woodruff Sawyer recognizes is the opportunity to connect regional health insurance plans, offering employers more choices and flexibility in the coverage they buy. With this solution in mind, the firm has invested in a startup that is innovating the coordination of regional plans: Stonebrook Risk.
Expanding Health Plan Networks in a Market Poised for Growth
Stonebrook is developing a new standardized program that allows regional health plans in adjacent non-competing markets to collaborate and form multistate networks. This enables regional health plans to increasingly serve middle-market employers that stretch outside the geographic boundary of their existing provider networks.
Additionally, Stonebrook’s proprietary digital platform offers consistent, optimal pricing across insurance products and markets. The platform’s artificial intelligence capabilities comb through massive data sets of regional health plans as part of the onboarding process, rigorously evaluating potential consolidation partners along the way.
Woodruff Sawyer brings Stonebrook’s capabilities to regional health plans because it sees a market segment both ripe for disruption and positioned for major growth.
“There’s a need for providers to sustain themselves against large competitors,” Kakel explains. “The ability of Stonebrook to facilitate coverage for small and medium-size employers will be a strategic advantage in the marketplace for this underserved sector. We view this investment as a validation of our passion for innovation and delivering new, creative solutions for our clients and meeting the needs of the marketplace.”