Would You Buy Your Company's Workers Comp Insurance From Overstock.com?

...because Overstock.com is now selling Workers Compensation insurance, along with other lines of commercial property/casualty insurance, as well as personal lines. And I see Wal-Mart has just started selling Auto insurance (personal lines, I presume).

I strongly suspect that Overstock.com will not be competing on large accounts anytime soon. But this is, after all, very early days for this venture, which is in partnership with Insuritas. But it certainly feels like just the start of something big, something that may revolutionize the hidebound insurance delivery system.

The question remains, of course, what may be lost with this revolution, and what will be gained? For smaller employers, this could be a useful innovation, as smaller employers have often gotten short shrift from the traditional insurance system. But will getting commercial insurance from the likes of Overstock.com be better? Perhaps the implied improvement in electronic paper trail might offer some benefit to policyholders, as the occasional failings and oversights of the traditional analog system are replaced with something more reliable. But we have also seen spectacular screw-ups in the digital age, with information breaches and the like at supposedly large and reliable companies.

We are boldly going into new territory here, and only time will tell about the relative merits and demerits of this new development. The only thing I am confident of, at this point, is that Overstock.com will soon have competition for the online sale of commercial insurance.