biBERK, a, child of Berkshire Hathaway Direct Insurance, is a new unit that lets owners of small businesses shop online for commercial vehicle, general liability, property, workers’ compensation and eventually professional liability insurance. It was previously known as “Cover Your Business” until a March name change that could benefit from Berkshire’s cachet, was the brainchild of Ajit Jain, Berkshire’s top insurance executive.

Jain wanted a hassle-free way for small business owners to bypass insurance agents, often getting quotes within five minutes after completing short questionnaires. “Amazon.com can deliver something to you in four hours,” The biBERK chief operating officer, Rakesh Gupta, who grew up in New Delhi and specialized in “big data” before joining biBERK, said in a recent interview. “If people can buy paper towels on the internet, why not insurance?”

Sales data are confidential, but Gupta said biBERK, or Business Insurance Berkshire Hathaway, is signing up twice as many customers as a year ago.The business reflects none of Omaha-based Berkshire’s appetite for assuming huge insurance risks, such as major catastrophes or American International Group property and casualty claims, in exchange for upfront payments Buffett can invest.

However insurers have been slow to adopt online technology in part because of state regulatory burdens. The company hopes biBERK will attract more younger, more technology-savvy people going into business for themselves.

Berkshire’s entry into online business insurance also is part of an industry-wide movement known as InsureTech, aimed at bringing the wonders of new technology to the $4 trillion-a-year insurance market. In some cases, technology can reduce or even eliminate the cost of processing claims, according to attendees at an industry conference last October in Las Vegas called InsureTech Connect.

Then there’s the sometimes-tedious process of underwriting, or evaluating insurance risk, deciding whether to insure someone and setting the premium charged. With the proper design, that can happen quickly thanks to today’s interconnected information world, said Gupta, a veteran of the former Omaha online information company InfoUSA.

In workers’ compensation, biBERK typically provides instant quotes to 60 percent of applicants, denies 20 percent, and asks 20 percent to speak with representatives. Improvements to the sign-up process now permit 50 percent of customers to buy without human help, up from 10 percent a year ago.

Gupta said business insurance could follow the trajectory of auto insurance, where Berkshire’s Geico unit, as well as rivals Progressive and USAA, won market share from State Farm and Allstate by driving underwriting costs, and premiums, down. “If that happens, we want to be at the forefront,” he said.