Zurich and Cowbell earn 2026 E&S Insurer Innovation Award

Zurich North America today announced that its Zurich E&S business, in collaboration with Cowbell, has received the 2026 E&S Insurer Award for Innovation in E&S, recognizing a joint solution that is transforming how management liability insurance is delivered in the wholesale market.

The award recognizes the companies’ efforts to streamline underwriting and expand access to management liability coverage for small- to mid-sized businesses through a digitally enabled, data‑driven approach. By combining Cowbell’s agentic AI‑powered underwriting platform with Zurich’s underwriting, product, and claims capabilities, the companies are transforming how management liability insurance is delivered in the U.S. Excess & Surplus market.

By combining Zurich’s underwriting expertise with Cowbell’s AI-powered platform, the solution delivers:

• Accelerated response times: Bindable quotes delivered in seconds through API integration and agentic AI‑powered email ingestion and automation.
• Broadened access to coverage: Directors and officers (D&O), employment practices liability (EPL), crime, and fiduciary solutions expanded to serve more small, midsize, and underserved businesses.
• Enhanced efficiency: A simplified, data‑driven experience enabled by intelligent automation and streamlined workflows for brokers and underwriters.

“This recognition reflects our shared commitment to innovation and our focus on making sophisticated insurance solutions more accessible,” said Chris Lewis, President of Zurich E&S. “Together with Cowbell, we are rethinking how management liability solutions are delivered—helping brokers move faster and enabling more businesses to secure the coverage they need.”

The award-winning solution builds on Zurich and Cowbell’s broader collaboration to deliver a modular suite of management liability coverages through the E&S channel, alongside cyber.

At the core of the platform is advanced automation technology that extracts, validates, and processes underwriting information from submissions, significantly reducing turnaround times, and improving overall efficiency for brokers and underwriters. 

 This recognition underscores Zurich North America’s continued focus on innovation in the E&S market and its commitment to delivering modern, technology-enabled risk solutions for customers.

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