Agency Revolution: Wider growth ahead with Forge3 buy

Scott White (pictured top), CEO of Agency Revolution and FMG, said Forge3’s technology and approach fits in well and brings complementary IP to the table.

“We saw that they had developed an incredibly impressive marketing platform,” White said. “They have high [customer] retention, and we wanted to add that to our portfolio of products.”

Neither side disclosed Forge3’s purchase price.

Agency Revolution employs more than 100 people, White said, and Forge3 will be integrated into Agency Revolution’s operations. Plans call for keeping Forge3’s employees. The brand will be fully absorbed into Agency Revolution, however, which can now tout two marketing platforms as well as an upcoming social media product. Forge3’s team is dotted across California but with a concentration in the Northeast.

Jeff Teschke (pictured immediately above), Forge3’s founder and CEO, said that the sale to Agency Revolution enables its customers to increase their options after repeated requests.

“When we were talking with our clients and looking at the industry and trends in general, we knew we had an outstanding platform … people really love us, but they were also looking and starting to ask for other pieces of the marketing puzzle,” Teschke said. “We evaluated the options, and we already had a lot of mutual clients, and we said this [acquisition] makes a lot of sense.”

Interest in the acquisition built up over time, Teschke added.

“When you’re in this space you just build relationships and you know people and the stars line up sometimes,” Teschke said. “I would say this is a perfect example of that.”

Teschke added he felt it made sense to stay on as Forge3 integrates into Agency Revolution.

“It was the right thing to do to make sure the team, the clients and the product – the transition at the very least – was as streamlined as possible,” he said. “There are so many opportunities this opens up for the industry … and you want to see all these opportunities come to fruition.”

The Forge3 platform

Agency Revolution and Forge3 pitch the Forge3 ActiveAgency (soon to be renamed Forge) platform as the highest-rated, fastest growing insurance agency platform in the industry. Launched in 2016, it is designed to help agents be more successful and look good, in part as a fronting website for agents and brokers.

“There are a bunch of really cool sales tools built into it that take it beyond a simple website that sits out there,” Teschke said. “The folks within the agency can use those tools [and those features], proactively and reactively to get people to the website, and also during the sales process.”

Think of it as a type of white-label platform but more customized.

“The platform itself sits behind the scenes. You’re not going to see “ActiveAgency” or “Forge” or anything on the insurance agency’s website … we’re just providing the technology and the platform to enable that for them,” Teschke said.

‘A little bit geeky’

Teschke describes the Forge3 platform with enthusiasm, warning he is going to “get a little bit geeky here” before he begins to outline some of the “really cool tools” it includes. Its inspiration: big insurance companies.

“My dad worked at Chubb and I worked at Chubb, and a lot of these things that we ended up building into the platform came from those experiences and my connections and the team’s connections to the industry,” Teschke said.

One of those features includes “clickable coverage.” This includes interactive graphics meant to make the consumer process easier and more fun. A brewery owner, for example, might go to the website’s brewery page, with a clickable graphic that informs about the insurance risks you’d have as a brewery owner, and what the coverage solution would be. The company has more than 50 “clickable” coverage” content pieces meant to educate customers as they explore their coverage options.

Hello Producer is another feature. It lets agency principals send a link with a hashtag at the end of it.

“If you want to link to a page on your website, you might put a hashtag market at the end of it, and the entire experience gets personalized with [your] contact information. Salespeople and producers at agencies love that,” Teschke said.

The system also enables agents to easily record video or audio proposals to explain for customers policy differences and options. They can be placed on the website and create what Teschke called “a ‘wow’ factor.”

On top of that, the Forge3 platform also relies heavily on API connections, so it can integrate with a number of industry platforms.

“We view the website as a hub of the wheel [where] in different spokes we have to enable as many of these folks to work … and those spokes are various connections, and integrations,” Teschke said. “APIs are sometimes how we accomplish that, but at a high level. Making the different systems work together seamlessly is really cool and important, and we do all of that.”