Trufla offers tech products to
cover all stages of the policy lifecycle
By Christopher W. Cook
Webster’s defines a disruption as a break or interruption in the normal course of continuation of some activity or process. A not-so-great example, although it ties into something later, would be my bucket list item of seeing the Northern Lights in person. I’ve always envisioned that I’d gaze upon the wonderous sight for the first time in a place like Alaska or Iceland. However, the chances of that happening are being disrupted.
Due to solar storms and other “science stuff,” the Northern Lights are being seen further south. Just a few months ago, individuals across Indiana filled my social media feed with pictures of the phenomenon. I was attending a theater performance on the prime night for viewing and thankfully missed it, because I don’t want to cross that bucket-list item off in my backyard or Principal Seymour Skinner’s kitchen in The Simpsons. (There’s an obscure pop culture reference for you.)
We hear the word disruption a lot in the insurance industry, often referring to artificial intelligence and new technologies changing the game of how business is done or clients are served. One Canadian tech firm took the word to heart and used the concept for its namesake: Trufla, which is the Icelandic word for disruption.
In 2009, Trufla Technologies Founder and CEO Sherif Gemayel started Sharp Insurance in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. “I wasn’t an insurance guy when I started my agency; [agency ownership] was my first entry into insurance,” he says. “Within the first couple of years, we became one of the fastest growing agencies in Canada. At our peak, we were writing about $2 million a month in new business.
“We were growing at a berserk pace,” he recalls, “and it was largely on the back of digital capabilities.”
As an agency owner, Gemayel was taking the pain points his team was experiencing and using them to build out their own tech platforms. “The one thing we learned very quickly was that we could not compete against big players in the online space,” he says. “It was tough to try to outbuy ads against the big insurance companies, your direct-to-consumer carriers or your captives, because they could just outspend you.
“We had to be smarter about how we did it. So we started building out our website and investing in search engine optimization (SEO) and how we were driving in leads. We learned very quickly; one of our big claims to fame is that we were one of the first companies in North America to build an external-facing app—the first version was built in 2011.
“It started taking off, and that’s when we started getting into data,” Gemayel continues. “We realized that if we could tap into the data in our agency management system, we could change the client experience, and then it just exploded from there.
“We had a company that was managing all our web assets and doing the marketing for us, and we recognized that this was a core competence that we had to have internally.”
To solve this, Sharp Insurance acquired that company, E-Method Digital Agency, in 2016. “We brought in some of their capabilities, and then we started building more technology and data capabilities on top of it,” Gemayel says. “As we were building out the technology for ourselves, we started getting approached by our competitors that would say, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool what you guys are doing. Can we use some of that technology as well?’”
This was the start of Trufla Technologies, which was founded in 2018. Today, the team has around 150 employees. Fifty are based in Canada, and the other 100—which consists of tech developers and customer support staff—are based in Cairo, Egypt.
“We realized that if we could tap into the data in our
agency management system, we could change the
client experience, and then it just exploded from there.”
—Sherif Gemayel
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Trufla
“My background is Egyptian, as is our chief technology officer, Wassim Salib, the brains behind all our technology,” Gemayel says. “We started building out our tech capabilities in Cairo.”
Another key member of the team is Dave Duncan, the firm’s chief information officer, who handles most of the delivery and client-facing side of the business.
To focus solely on the tech side of the industry, Gemayel sold Sharp Insurance in 2021.
Products
Trufla offers multiple products, with its three core offerings covering the different stages of the insurance policy life cycle.
“The first product, which we call truWeb, is something we actively sell in the United States; it’s a Web as a Service (WaaS) platform,” Gemayel says. “The whole intent of it is the acquisition of clients. It’s designed to drive more leads and help agents grow their top line business. How do we help agencies acquire clients digitally faster and cheaper?
“Almost all the agencies that are on TruWeb, that built their website on our platform and that we do the marketing for, rank on page one of Google.”
The second platform, truMarket, is what Gemayel refers to as a “Salesforce meets HubSpot meets a traditional agency management system,” he says. “It has lead management and customer relationship management capabilities, along with rating [software]. truMarket is available in the United States, as well.
“Our second platform is designed to help agents manage their leads and create automation around it. Just because you drive a lot of leads doesn’t mean you’re necessarily closing that business. You have to manage it in a meaningful way, not just into a spreadsheet.”
The third offering, truMobile, is “where it started, the white label mobile app and portal,” Gemayel says. “It morphed into data reporting capabilities on the back end for agencies, along with a communications engine we built into the platform. You can create email campaigns, deliver documents, and it has some pretty intense marketing capabilities.”
In a nutshell, “now that you’ve sold the policy and you’re managing the client, you can create self-serve capabilities and marketing capabilities and touch points so you can keep that client engaged and retained.”
The mobile app offering is the only one of the three not available in the United States.
“We’ve also built some AI tools,” Gemayel adds. “Our first AI product that we built was called AI Retention X-Ray. [With it], we can predict which personal lines clients are at risk of being lost by giving the agent an understanding of the price intensity of their renewal relative to the rest of the market. We have one of the deepest data sets in the industry in Canada and this is the kind of tech we want to bring to the United States now.”
For an agency owner interested in Trufla, you can visit their website to get started. “You can engage with myself directly or our chief growth officer—we’re both former agents—or a member of our sales team,” Gemayel says. “We’re not just a tech vendor; we understand what agencies are trying to accomplish and what their pain points are.
“[On our website] you can request a demo and we’ll show our products. We will even connect you with other agents who use our products, so that you’re getting firsthand feedback as to how our products have been working for other agencies.”
“We have found [Trufla’s] development teams to be far beyond
that of either a cookie-cutter solution or a community-based
website design company. Their internal knowledge of insurance
combined with the SEO magic that they can create are a winning combination.”
—Aaron Levine
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
LG Insurance Agency
An agency perspective
For LG Insurance Agency, a P-C shop located in West Long Branch, New Jersey, the need for new technology led to a partnership with an already established relationship.
“I first met Sherif at an insurance industry event called BrainShare that was held in Puerto Rico,” says Aaron Levine, agency founder and CEO. “I had the opportunity to hear him talk about Trufla’s capabilities and his history as an insurance agency owner turned technology CEO. When I learned about what truMarket was capable of doing with respect to organizing and managing inbound leads compared to traditional form fills on a website, I became instantly intrigued.”
But Levine didn’t grab the shiny object immediately. “We didn’t engage with Trufla for at least a year later or more, but as we continued to see each other at various events, I quickly understood that they were committed to the growth of the independent insurance agency channel, and to helping us create organic content to blow the SEO game away compared to competitors and manage inbound opportunities with a workflow,” he says.
Trufla made sense when “it was time for us to invest in a new website and add technology in order to boost our rankings on Google,” Levine recalls. “We have found their development teams to be far beyond that of either a cookie-cutter solution or a community-based website design company. Their internal knowledge of insurance combined with the SEO magic that they can create are a winning combination.”
For an agency owner interested in boosting their technology, Levine advises: “It’s important to understand that investing in web technology is not like turning on a light switch. It takes time. It takes effort and it takes money. The agency and development team need to work hand in hand to create content and the visual appeal that is going to speak from the agency’s voice and not just that of the developer.
“That value proposition of staying in the voice of the agency is incredibly important to me and for anyone creating and promoting a brand in a very crowded space,” he concludes.
For more information:
Trufla
trufla.com
