At an insurance conference, where most people seem to be dressed in tan or navy, Josh LaRiccia (pictured) is easy to find. Look for the bright yellow backpack.
The bag started as a practical fix. Too many meetings at big industry events fell apart because people couldn’t find each other in the crowd, so he told everyone to look for the yellow bag. “I never get missed in a meeting or in a conference,” he said. The backpack has since become a running joke on LinkedIn.
It suits his new job, which is mostly about being found. LaRiccia started at Corgi on Oct. 19, after the San Francisco-based carrier named him head of distribution to build a network of MGAs, wholesalers and national retail partners. He says he held somewhere between 15 and 18 meetings with prospective partners in his first three weeks.
Corgi made its name selling coverage to startups directly, with no broker in the loop. The start up has, however, decided that it does need intermediaries to be able to scale with any success. LaRiccia’s plan for maximising that reach relies on simple arithmetic. A carrier that works with 50 wholesalers and MGAs manages 50 relationships and pays 50 commissions. Appointing 100,000 retail agents one at a time is a very different job – so he’s planning on taking the wholesaler route wherever possible.
That doesn’t make retailers less important in his view. “Without a retail agent, there is in most cases not anything,” he said. His point is, however, that most retailers will increasingly reach carriers through someone else’s technology. Many wholesalers and MGAs now run digital marketplaces with single sign-on access to dozens of markets. Bridge Specialty Group, for example, launched one for personal lines this spring. For an agency that can’t afford its own API connections or tech team, LaRiccia argues, logging into a wholesaler’s platform and binding within minutes is the obvious choice.
Corgi’s quoting platform is called Atlas. That is a coincidence for a man who spent years at Atlas General Insurance Services. According to LaRiccia, Corgi’s systems mean that about 89% of submissions go straight from quote to bind without an underwriter touching them. The other 11% go to an underwriter for review.
How fast do those come back? “I’ve heard hours,” he said. “It’s definitely not days.” Brokers get either a bindable quote or a list of follow-up questions.
The split matters for distribution as much as for underwriting. Most submitters get an instant answer, and the remaining share is small enough for underwriters to turn around quickly.
For the past few years, LaRiccia sold one product: admitted general liability across a set list of about 250 class codes. Corgi gives him far more to offer. He listed habitational and monoline property, including coastal wind in Florida and Texas, plus builder’s risk, liquor liability, GL, cyber and auto. There is also a new transportation unit covering towing and trucking, which Corgi put under Daniel Hausman, a veteran who built three trucking programs from scratch. By LaRiccia’s count, Corgi is live in about 36 or 37 states.
“Our menu of whatever you want, basically,” is how he describes the pitch.
It is also his first job in excess and surplus lines. During his interviews, he said, Corgi’s team told him they believe there are no bad risks, only bad pricing. That idea appealed to someone used to turning business away.
The timing of Corgi’s expansion into non-admitted looks to be good. Surplus lines premium in the 15 stamping office states reached $90.3 billion in 2025, up 7.8%, according to the Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association. Growth slowed, but it was still growth.
Corgi has also built out its structure quickly. In January it secured carrier approval alongside a $108 million raise. In August it launched an admitted carrier aimed at salons, dry cleaners and other small businesses. Investors have kept up: TechCrunch reported a round at a $4 billion valuation in July, Corgi’s third raise in eight weeks.
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LaRiccia’s route to an AI-native carrier started at a State Farm agency in 2002. He was a 23-year-old new father who knew he needed life insurance, partly because his own father had not been able to get it. He sold for about three years, moved into personal lines underwriting at Arrowhead, and then joined Appalachian Underwriters.
At Appalachian he became the firm’s first California workers’ comp underwriter, despite having no comp background. The firm sent him to Tennessee for training built around the NCCI system. California runs its own rating bureau, the WCIRB, so he learned much of the job from the brokers he worked with.
After five or six years he moved to Atlas General and took a pay cut. He says it took three years to earn back what he had made before, but the move gave him a chance to grow and progress. At Atlas he built a small business unit that grew to about nine underwriters and, by his estimate, roughly $100 million in premium. He also helped run GoQuote, an online indication tool for agents. The data science team reviewed it monthly, adjusting pricing based on quote-to-bind ratios. “If the quote-to-bind ratio was too high, well, then that means we’re probably too cheap,” he said.
In 2022 he left to co-found First Insurance & Risk Management with Jonathan Hooven, a former colleague who had gone on to a senior role at Hiscox USA. First was set up through Mission Underwriters, the Altamont-backed platform that gives entrepreneurial underwriters capital and back-office support.
LaRiccia describes himself as a cautious person, so the structure at the start up mattered. I’m on the 38th floor right now and I don’t get too close to the window,” he said. He kept a salary and benefits, so the main risk was that the business might fail. “What convinced him was the team. “I would bet 1,000 times over 1,000 times on the group of people that were getting put together.”
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Beyond wholesalers and MGAs, LaRiccia has two longer-term ideas. The first is trade associations. He wants to find the go-to broker for, say, a state HVAC association, build a program together, and eventually become that association’s designated carrier.
The second is embedded distribution. He named Coverforce, iBind, Ivans and Bold Penguin as examples of the platforms he plans to talk to. No deals have been announced.
He also offers a habit from his First days. When a retail agent’s account isn’t a fit, he refers them to a few trusted wholesalers in their area rather than leaving them with nothing.
LaRiccia, who turned 50 this year, guesses the average age at Corgi is around 24 or 25. He doesn’t hide how impressed he is. After a few early meetings, he recalls telling colleagues, “I think you actually know more about insurance than I do.”
What he brings is the relationship side of the business. On a recent trip to Atlanta, he searched LinkedIn for local contacts, messaged a conference acquaintance, and took him to a Hawks game. They spent more time talking about family than about insurance. In his view, that is the point: “the business kind of takes care of itself.”
Brokers will still have practical questions for him. These include which states Corgi’s paper is licensed in, what ratings it carries, how commissions work, and whether Corgi’s direct-to-startup channel will compete with its partners. Those answers will likely shape how quickly the yellow backpack fills up with partners.
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