How a personal loss, messy data, and broker-first design came together to tackle underinsurance

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When Mark Leonard talks about broken data in insurance, he isn’t speaking in hypotheticals; he’s speaking from lived experience.

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Leonard, Founder and CEO of Inspectform, is a serial technology founder with deep expertise in big data and workflow design. His path into insurtech wasn’t planned; it was catalyzed by devastation close to home. After the Boulder Marshall Fire tore through his neighborhood in Colorado, a report revealed that 74% of the affected properties were underinsured, and 36% were severely underinsured. Homes were gone, families were displaced, and the gap between expected coverage and reality became impossible to ignore.

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“It was devastating and ripped apart my community,” Leonard says. “Underinsurance is one of the biggest problems I’ve ever seen, so I went to brokers and carriers and asked how to help. They said better COPE data would help.” That answer became the foundation for Inspectform.

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What Inspectform Does and Why It Matters to Brokers

Inspectform is a COPE (Construction, Occupancy, Protection, and Exposure) data platform built to find, verify, and consolidate the hardest and most fragmented property data needed to place coverage. 

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At a practical level, Inspectform allows brokers to plug in an address and receive enriched COPE data from dozens of sources in one place. The platform fills in missing information, cross-checks accuracy, auto-generates Statements of Values (SOVs), and clearly shows where each data point came from. For brokers, that means fewer dead ends, less back-and-forth with property owners, and far less manual work pulling together submissions.

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“Agencies use Inspectform to open the market, unlock better coverage and pricing faster, and auto-generate SOVs,” Leonard explains. “Getting COPE data is difficult for brokers and carriers. We’re built to remove that friction.”

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The impact goes well beyond convenience. Incomplete or inaccurate COPE data can limit carrier options, slow down placement, and lead to underinsured properties. Inspectform helps brokers deliver cleaner submissions upfront, which improves carrier response, expands market access, and ultimately leads to more accurate coverage. Additionally, more complete and verified data helps reduce errors & omissions (E&O) risk, giving brokers greater confidence in the submissions they take to market.

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Born From Messy Data, Built for Efficiency

Leonard’s background in big data shaped Inspectform’s core approach. COPE data exists, but it’s scattered across public records, third-party vendors, proprietary databases, PDFs, and spreadsheets. Brokers are often forced to reconcile conflicting information manually, or worse, move forward with incomplete data.

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“COPE data is really messy and fragmented,” Leonard says. “We’re the best at finding ways to clean that data across locations and databases and making it simple and seamless for your team to fill out submissions.”

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Inspectform aggregates and cross-checks COPE data from more than 30 sources, creating significantly deeper and more complete property profiles than traditional methods. Just as importantly, it surfaces the data in a way brokers can trust, with full visibility into sources and citations. That transparency is critical for broker teams who need to move quickly while still standing behind the accuracy of their work.

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What Sets Inspectform Apart

While COPE data solutions aren’t new, Inspectform differentiates itself in several key ways that matter directly to brokers:

• Superior data depth by aggregating and validating COPE data across more than 30 sources
• Significant cost savings, operating at a price point roughly 20 times cheaper than legacy competitors
• Major efficiency gains by eliminating manual SOV entry and reducing verification time
• Measurable productivity impact, with teams seeing up to a 10x increase in throughput

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The result is a tool that doesn’t just replace one task, but fundamentally changes how broker teams handle property submissions. For producers, that means faster turnaround and more markets. For service teams, it means less manual data chasing. And for leadership, it means scalable processes that don’t rely on tribal knowledge or heroic effort.

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Entering Insurance, Breaking Through, and Finding the Right Partners

Like many insurtech startups, Inspectform’s biggest challenge hasn’t been solving the technical problem — it’s been breaking into one of the industry’s most relationship-driven markets.

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“Breaking into the insurance industry is tough,” Leonard says. “Even when brokers immediately recognize the pain of getting COPE data, gaining awareness is still a challenge.”

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That’s one of the reasons Inspectform joined the BrokerTech Ventures accelerator.

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“I joined BTV to work for the best tech-forward brokers and carriers,” Leonard says. “Specifically, BTV Mania blew my mind. I met multiple high-caliber leaders at the most innovative brokerages and carriers within 48 hours.”

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For Inspectform, access to forward-thinking brokers wasn’t just about distribution — it was about refining the product alongside teams who live with COPE challenges every day. Since inception, Inspectform has gained traction with some of the largest firms in insurance, validating both the problem and the approach.

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Real-World Broker Impact

While Inspectform keeps its workflow simple, the downstream impact is significant:

• Faster, more complete submissions that improve carrier response
• Expanded market access due to higher-quality COPE data
• Reduced burden on property owners who don’t have detailed building information
• Lower risk of underinsurance driven by missing or inaccurate exposure data
• Reduced E&O exposure through more reliable, validated COPE data used in submissions

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Brokers can move faster without sacrificing quality, helping protect insureds while strengthening client relationships. Leonard says the goal is not to burden owners or force brokers into new workflows, but to remove friction from a process that has long accepted inefficiency as unavoidable.

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“Brokers want a better COPE experience without burdening owners,” he says. “This is an obvious solution; they just don’t know about us yet.”

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What’s New, What’s Next

Inspectform’s roadmap continues to focus on making COPE data more actionable and integrated into broker workflows. Its Application Programming Interface (API) is now live — the first to deliver COPE data with full source citations and summarized insights, allowing firms to embed Inspectform directly into their existing systems and limit E&O exposure.

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Beyond the API, Inspectform is expanding its platform to include owner portfolio and prospecting capabilities. Brokers can now plug in an address to surface property owner contact details including email, phone number, and key decision-makers, giving producers a powerful new way to identify and engage prospects.

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The platform is also introducing the ability to search by property owner name to view their entire portfolio in a structured SOV format, effectively creating a “CoStar for insurance” that helps brokers uncover opportunities and better understand total exposure across properties.

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As Inspectform grows, its focus remains squarely on helping brokers deliver better outcomes — faster placement, better coverage, and fewer surprises after the policy is bound.

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A Call to Brokers

Inspectform’s message to brokers is straightforward: see the data for yourself. Share this article with your domain expert on properties and new business. Schedule a free demo, and they can share 5–10 properties they would like to review live on the call. It's the easiest and fastest way to show relevant value. Try it today.

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