Maxwell Health launches Marketplace Store

Maxwell Health this week launched its Marketplace Store, “an e-commerce-like experience that eliminates the need for managing multiple spreadsheets from various carriers to quote products for small and medium size businesses,” the company says. EBA spoke with Mike Zarrillo, Maxwell’s VP of marketplace and strategic partnerships to learn more about the new tool.

EBA: What is the new product?

Zarrillo: The new Maxwell Marketplace Store is a product that puts the Marketplace in the hands of our broker partners. Our marketplace is a curated suite of products and services from a number of blue ribbon insurance carrier, financial and lifestyle partners.

Mike-zarrillo
Mike Zarrillo

What we have done is created an environment or tool where they can shop for, access, compare, learn about these products that are pre-built and pre-configured on our platform, so that they can more easily put them in front of their clients and help their clients solve objectives around delivering top-notch benefits packages for their employees.

Our marketplace has been in existence since we launched and we’ve operated with a directory of those products and services, a more static environment, where a broker can learn about those particular partnerships that we have in place. What we have done with the store is take that to another level. So as a broker sits down on their own time or with their employer clients, they can shop for all the products and services that we have built in our marketplace — that are preconfigured and prepackaged.

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It is a tool for brokers to more easily understand what is available on the Maxwell platform and then facilitate the quoting process for the ancillary insurance products. In the past, that process for most brokers was pretty clunky and pretty time-consuming. We have … moved it to an e-commerce shopping-like experience where the broker searches for the product in our store and wants quotes for those products. They add those products across various carriers to their cart, and submit that to our team behind the scenes, who then facilities that on their behalf with carrier partners to get those proposals.

EBA: Why is there a need for this?

Zarrillo: For some brokers, it was a problem in the past. Many brokers will tell you the quoting process or the process in general of managing all the products and carriers available today was difficult. It wouldn’t be uncommon for some brokers to tell you when they market a life, a disability, a dental or vision case that they may have 15-20 carriers to reach out to for proposals. Some are looking to simplify that because it is time-consuming and very costly. Every carrier has a different process or requirement. For some, it was problematic.

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We believe pretty passionately that no more than today has the broker’s time been more valuable. When you think of the needs of the client, brokers are being asked to consult in ways they haven’t before. The demand in time is more significant than ever and broker’s time is more precious than ever. What we said is if we can help with a time-consuming process for managing all the various products that exist in the market, bring those to a place where the broker can shop for and access those products in a simplified fashion, then back that up with a team of experts behind the scenes, now we have given the broker something back that they really need and that is time and efficiency.

EBA: Is this a tool to gain new clients or work with existing?

Zarrillo: For those that are already Maxwell partner brokers, they can take advantage of this right now. Since we launched, the response, the account activations, the webinar sign-ups has been terrific. We also know that other brokers are experiencing some of the demands on their time, just as our existing broker clients are. We want the broker world to know that we are innovative.

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