On this episode of FNO: InsureTech, Rob Beller and Lee Boyd sit down with Bobby Touran, co-founder and CEO of Rainbow, a technology-enabled MGA that has carved out a distinctive niche in specialty commercial insurance. Bobby brings the energy of a serial entrepreneur and the depth of someone who has spent nearly a decade immersed in the surplus lines market, and he makes a compelling case for why going narrow on purpose is actually a winning strategy.

From software incubator to specialty insurance Bobby's path into insurance was, by his own admission, an accident. After graduating college and spending years as an entrepreneur, he joined a software incubator in San Francisco focused on financial services innovation. Commercial insurance and specifically the specialty market is where he and his co-founders landed. A trip to Lloyd's of London early on sealed the deal, and the energy of that world hasn't let go of him since.

What Rainbow actually builds Rainbow is not simply a distribution play.
The company builds three things simultaneously: insurance product, proprietary technology systems, and an agent-facing distribution network. With no reliance on third-party software for core operations, the team has constructed everything in-house, from rating and risk selection to quote, bind, issue, and policy management. It is a builder culture by design, and Bobby makes clear that this is a non-negotiable part of how Rainbow operates.

The inch wide, mile deep thesis
While many commercial insurance players have tried to cover as much ground as possible, Rainbow has gone the opposite direction, specializing deeply in the restaurant and food and beverage segment, a market with over five million establishments in the United States alone. Bobby explains why restaurants represent a compelling but historically distressed class of business, and how Rainbow's hyper-focused approach allows it to underwrite more accurately, build stronger agent relationships, and pursue better loss ratios than generalist competitors.

Continuous underwriting and the data advantage
One of the most distinctive concepts Bobby introduces is continuous underwriting, the idea that a policy should not simply be underwritten once at binding and reviewed at renewal, but monitored daily throughout the policy period. Rainbow's software pipelines pull publicly available data on insured businesses around the clock, flagging changes in hours of operation, online reviews mentioning food safety concerns, or evidence of operational drift. Rob and Lee dig into the mechanics of how this works in practice, from semantic search on review platforms to checking rooftops on Google Maps for grease trap maintenance indicators.

Agents as partners, not obstacles
At a time when many InsureTech companies tried to route around the agent channel, Rainbow deliberately built toward it. Bobby explains how the relationship between Rainbow's underwriters and retail agents is central to producing profitable business, and why agents who know and trust a carrier are more likely to send higher quality submissions. The conversation touches on how the industry has shifted since 2016 and why the pendulum has swung back toward recognizing what agents actually contribute to the underwriting process.

Expanding beyond restaurants
Bobby closes by discussing Rainbow's growth into adjacent verticals, including beauty and wellness, fitness studios, and salons. The logic mirrors the restaurant playbook, a shared digital platform, overlapping agent distribution, and the same discipline around risk classification and continuous monitoring. The vision is a portfolio of industry-specific verticals, all built on the same foundation Rainbow has been refining since 2022.

Rob and Lee wrap the episode reflecting on what makes Bobby stand out, not just as a founder, but as someone who came into insurance sideways and ended up fully converted. His own answer when asked his occupation: insurance agent.

Listen to Episode 301 wherever you listen to podcasts.