Products / Quoting, Rating & Proposal Tools

Word & Brown

Public facts

California and Nevada general agency quoting

California and Nevada general agency whose WBQuote platforms compare small-group, large-group, ancillary, and (in California) individual plans.

Visit wordandbrown.com

Overview

Word & Brown is a privately held general agency founded in 1985 by John Word and Edward “Rusty” Brown. The firm says it built WBQuote as a group-health quoting engine that helped it become a large independent small-group distributor. Public pages and the broker blog state that Word & Brown serves California (since the 1980s) and Nevada (since 2007) and is those states’ largest GA focused on group and individual/family insurance. Brokers can run quotes in WBQuote or WBQuote Lite, or have Word & Brown’s team produce quotes under a 24-hour SLA. The homepage contact form offers only California and Nevada.

Why it matters In California and Nevada it is a primary GA quoting desk—WBQuote plus humans who will run the quote if the broker does not.

Target buyer: Licensed benefits and individual-health brokers appointed in California and/or Nevada who want GA quoting, enrollment support, and compliance help.
Pricing model: Included for appointed Word & Brown brokers; no public software fee schedule; The broker blog states that partnering with Word & Brown does not reduce broker compensation. No SaaS price for WBQuote appears on the public site.
Availability: CA, NV
Research: Last researched 2026-08-23; Agent-strong category

Key features

WBQuote and WBQuote Lite multi-carrier quoting
Side-by-side comparisons, integrated provider search, and current rates
Optional full-service quoting by Word & Brown staff (24-hour SLA)
Small-group quoting, online enrollment kits, and ACA calculators
In-house compliance team and Compliance Wiki
CE courses, webinars, and field enrollment support including bilingual meetings

Integrations

Employee Navigator (public 2026 FAQ webinars on the Ease-to-Employee Navigator transition)
Carrier portals and forms libraries (searchable forms and docs)
WBQuote consumer/broker quoting workflow

Overview

Word & Brown Insurance Administrators (the Word & Brown General Agency) is a privately held, family business that dates its start to 1985. Company history pages say John Word and Rusty Brown developed WBQuote, a group-health quoting engine, and that the GA became a large independent small-group distributor within two years. They received an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2001.

The public site and broker blog consistently limit the footprint to California and Nevada (Nevada since 2007). Homepage stats: 40 years as a privately held family business, 160+ team members, 217,000+ groups enrolled (vendor figures). Product lines described for brokers include Small Group, Large Group, PEO, and Ancillary; Individual & Family Plan help is specified for California.

In January 2017, National General Holdings acquired Quotit Corporation and HealthCompare from The Word & Brown Companies. Quotit is a separate quoting-software company after that sale; it is not the current Word & Brown GA product.

Key Capabilities

WBQuote: side-by-side plan analysis, integrated provider search, and up-to-date rates for individual/family and group shopping. Word & Brown also markets WBQuote Lite.
Staff-run quotes delivered to a secure inbox, email, or printed proposals, with a published 24-hour service-level agreement (“zero latency quoting” in a March 2026 article).
Tools listed on the homepage: small-group quoting, online enrollment kits, ACA calculators, integrated provider search, Compliance Wiki, searchable forms, CE, and ACA compliance education.
Field sales representatives and on-site/bilingual enrollment support.
2026 newsroom items cover California and Nevada carrier updates, MLR rebates, PEO extraction, and Employee Navigator transition webinars.

Integrations & Ecosystem

Public 2026 posts confirm Word & Brown supports brokers moving from Ease to Employee Navigator. Carrier document libraries and quoting sit inside WBQuote / GA processes. A full named carrier-rating API list was not published on the pages reviewed.

Pricing

WBQuote is a GA tool for appointed brokers, not a priced SaaS SKU on wordandbrown.com. The firm says the GA relationship does not cut broker comp.

Notes & Limitations

States are California and Nevada only on official contact and “top GA” pages—not National.
Quotit is historically associated with Word & Brown but was sold in 2017; do not treat current Connecture or Quotit.com products as Word & Brown software.
Group-enrollment and headcount figures are vendor-reported.
Which carriers appear in WBQuote for a given ZIP and line is not published as a complete matrix.

Sources

Tags: general agency · WBQuote · California · Nevada · small-group quoting · Word & Brown