Openly

Openly is a Boston-based MGA founded in 2017 by Ty Harris and Matt Wielbut. Harris had spent years at Liberty Mutual focused on global consumer markets. Wielbut came from Goldman Sachs and had co-founded Elements Insurance, a Boston digital-first brokerage that was acquired by Titan Insurance. They started Openly to fix a specific problem: high-end homeowners were underserved by carriers whose quoting processes were slow, opaque, and built for a mass market, and independent agents had no good digital option for placing them.

What it does. Openly is a program administrator — it designs the product, sets rates, underwrites risk, and handles policy admin, billing, and claims on behalf of its carrier partners. The carriers (MS Transverse and Clear Blue Financial Holdings) are the entities that legally hold the risk and pay claims. Agents who are appointed by Openly can generate a fully underwritten homeowners quote in about 15 seconds. The inputs are minimal: name, date of birth, and address. Behind that entry point, Openly's rating engine pulls county property records, aerial imagery, and home-listing data to underwrite the risk without a long application.

In-house stack. Openly built its rating, underwriting, billing, and policy administration systems internally rather than assembling off-the-shelf vendor software. CTO Matt Wielbut has described the rationale plainly: owning the stack means Openly can deploy changes on its own schedule, respond to agent feedback faster than a vendor roadmap allows, and integrate any part of the system to any other. The team averages roughly a dozen deployments per day. The agent portal includes a live-chat support line with a sub-one-minute average response time; agents are routed to support staff who can see exactly which screen the agent is on.

Products. Openly offers two policy forms: HO-5 (open-peril coverage for primary residences and vacation homes valued up to $5M in most states) and HO-3 (named-peril coverage for homes rented to others). Guaranteed replacement cost is standard — Openly offers this without requiring agents to negotiate a value, which is a friction point with traditional carriers. Liability limits go up to $1M.

Claims. Openly runs its own claims team and built its own electronic FNOL (first notice of loss) portal. As of May 2026, the claims department was piloting an AI contents-inventory tool called Claimtouch for large-loss claims. Claimtouch lets adjusters and policyholders submit structured or unstructured contents lists (including handwritten notes and photos); the system prices items against real-time retail data rather than requiring adjusters to search individual retailer sites. Openly's claims director reported a cycle-time reduction of more than 30 days on the pricing step after the tool went live.

Funding. Four disclosed rounds total roughly $162M. The Series A ($15M, June 2020) was led by Gradient Ventures — Alphabet's AI-focused fund — with Obvious Ventures, PJC, and Greenlight Re. The Series B ($40M, December 2020) was led by Advance Venture Partners with return investors including Gradient Ventures, Obvious Ventures, and Greenlight Re. A Series C brought cumulative funding to over $62M before the Series B (exact round size not separately reported in available sources). The Series D ($100M, September 2023) was led by Eden Global Partners with Gradient Ventures and other institutional backers. CEO Harris said in a contemporaneous interview that the round was intended to help Openly reach profitability and build the capital base regulators require carriers and program administrators to maintain.

Distribution. Openly sells exclusively through independent agents — agents who represent multiple carriers rather than a single brand. As of the Series D in September 2023, Openly had more than 30,000 appointed agents across 21 states. By May 2026, that had expanded to 24 states. The company has said it intends to continue expanding state by state.

Carrier partners. Openly publicly names MS Transverse and Clear Blue as its two carrier partners, both rated A or A- (Excellent) by AM Best. It does not disclose the reinsurance arrangements behind either carrier, so the full capacity structure is opaque.

What it replaces. For an independent agent, Openly replaces the manual quoting workflow on a standard carrier's legacy portal: a long application, multiple back-and-forth screens, waiting for an underwriting decision, and a policy form with limited customization. Agents who appoint with Openly describe it as faster and more flexible than alternatives for premium-home accounts, where coverage limits and guaranteed replacement cost matter most.

What it does not do. Openly is not a direct-to-consumer insurer. It does not write auto, commercial, life, health, or specialty lines. It is not available nationwide — roughly half of US states had no Openly availability as of mid-2026. And it is not a carrier, which means agents and policyholders depend on the stability of its carrier partner relationships rather than Openly's own balance sheet.