MarketScout Reaches 50,000 Member Milestone

Dallas-based MarketScout, an online property and casualty insurance exchange, announced that over 50,000 agents are now using its site.

Richard Kerr, formerly a main board member of Lambert Fenchurch and chairman and CEO of the group’s US Operations, launched MarketScout in June of 2000.

According to Kerr, “We felt the Internet was a great tool for providing retail agents access to hundreds of insurance markets, without the restraints of individual contracts or volume commitments. After departing from Lambert, our expectations were to align ourselves with two to three thousand agents. We never dreamed our user base would soar to 50,000 agents.”

MarketScout’s agency force is the largest agency network in the world. The average MarketScout agency is independently owned, employs 20 to 30 people and generates $35,000,000 in annual premium volume.

MarketScout is a subsidiary of Insurance Data Systems (IDS). IDS was founded by Richard Kerr in early 1995 and currently owns and operates over 50 insurance web portals. IDS also develops distribution and exposure tracking software for the insurance industry.

ING represented IDS in June 2000 when a single round of funding was raised from High Ridge Capital.