Directions Brain

First Connect

2 min read

First Connect

Overview

Carrier-access platform spun out of Hippo (~Dec 2024), backed by Centana Growth Partners; grew from ~30 to 130–150+ carriers/MGAs (NEXT, Nationwide, Coterie, Pie, Chubb, Root…). Free sign-up for licensed independent agents; sub-appointments “in as little as 5 minutes” with instant portal quoting/binding; positions itself as cheaper than wholesalers/aggregators. Commission split undisclosed (assume a haircut on sub-produced business).

Relationships

  • Smart Choice / SIAA — the agency-network alternatives (no-fee network vs heavier alliance).
  • coterie — API-first MGA also reachable directly.

Notes

  • Why it matters: the P2 market-access pick in insurance-tech-integration-stack — once the entity is licensed (~$8–15K, 2–4 months), First Connect + Smart Choice + E&S wholesalers (Pathpoint/Amwins) yield broad SMB quoting capability in weeks, consistent with carrier-access-not-licensing-gates-new-brokerages.
  • Portal-first, no public quoting API — the AI layer must automate portals or accept human-in-the-loop.
  • Diligence question: the commission split, and whether platform terms restrict routing/BoR migration.
  • First operator sighting, 2026-08-20. jasmyne-mcdonald uses First Connect to enter a commercial risk and get back carriers likely to be in appetite — alongside, not instead of, farmers’ embedded brokerage. Her caveat matters: the results are “sometimes incorrect and eligibility still fails,” so it is an approximation rather than a guarantee, and she still falls back on remembered per-niche defaults. This makes First Connect the first tracked product bearing directly on carrier-appetite-knowledge-is-the-broker-bottleneck — and reframes that wedge from existence to reliability. Its actual appetite-match accuracy is now a priority question for a vendor call.

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