10 insurtech creation and growth stories

September 15, 2022 3:28 PM

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From "Shopify for life insurance" to "TurboTax for commercial insurance," the disruptive minds behind the founding vision for insurtechs can be extremely creative.

And the inventiveness is as disparate as digital technology to proactively detect and mitigate boating risks to an automated cloud-based appraisal system to bring the jewelry insurance industry into the 21st century.

Here are the inside stories behind 10 insurtechs.

Ahoy!

Meet the insurtech: Ahoy!

A team of veteran naval officers, insurance leaders and tech experts are the backbone of insurtech Ahoy!, which combines innovative tools and software to mitigate boating-related risks with top class customer service in the event of a claim.

"We're high-touch insurance, not only because we want to reduce risk, but because we want to make our 'crew mates' – our customers – experience the best while they're boating, because boating is coming from the heart," said CEO and co-founder Amit Nisenbaum.

"[Boating] is something more akin to a pet than to a home or car," said Nisenbaum.

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Meet the insurtech: Ahoy!

Meet the insurtech: Pendella Technologies

The lack of individual life insurance policies in the U.S. is surprisingly high, with roughly half of the population without coverage. But with the emergence of digital technology and big data in the insurance space, Bob Gaydos, CEO and founder of Pendella Technologies, saw an opportunity.

Utilizing a recommendation engine that assesses a potential policyholder using more than the typical criteria, the company is able to customize a life insurance policy to fit.

"Just recommending the amount of life insurance is easy. I can do that in three questions. But what's the appropriate underwriting journey? What's the appropriate product?" says Gaydos. "For the engine to have purpose, we have to have multiple products and multiple journeys to take care of everybody."

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Meet the insurtech: Pendella Technologies

Meet the insurtech: Cover Whale

More effective use of technology spend on risk management and loss control was the impetus for Daniel Abrahamsen to launch Cover Whale, which utilizes co-pilot technology based on AI and ML to streamline commercial auto underwriting for truck drivers.

"How do you know if someone's behavior qualifies as safe or unsafe? There are a lot of factors that are hard to measure," says CEO and co-founder Abrahamsen. "[Our system] pulls that data into our platform, we match it up with the claims data, and that's what allows us to build driver profiles." These profiles help correct dangerous driving behaviors as well as inform insurance premiums.

The insurtech's innovative approach to underwriting and driver safety has helped the startup generate more than $15 million in seed funding as well as earn notice as a market leader in commercial auto.

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Meet the insurtech: Cover Whale

Meet the insurtech: BriteCo

Numerous phone calls, lots of paperwork and long waiting times are standard for customers taking out insurance for their jewelry, and that's before a claims process which could take months before being settled and jewelry replaced.

"I knew there had to be a better way, especially if we could apply automated and cloud-based technology to bring the jewelry insurance industry into the 21st century," says Dustin Lemick, founder of jewelry-focused insurtech BriteCo.

With a tech-enabled platform that includes an automated cloud-based appraisal system that can provide a quote in under 60 seconds, BriteCo is transforming an insurance process that was "out of date, outmoded and ripe for disruption," said Lemick.

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Meet the insurtech: BriteCo

Meet the insurtech: SafetyWing

What do young professionals do about benefits and health insurance when they take remote working one step further and combine it with traveling around the world? Until recently, there weren't too many options for such digital nomads.

Having worked as digital nomads themselves, Sondre Rasch, Sarah Sandnes and Hans Kjellby launched SafetyWing in 2018 to fill that gap and provide these workers with a safety net. "It's nomad insurance by nomads for nomads, and it works," says Rasch.

The company has two key products, one for the digital nomads who need to buy medical insurance for coverage outside their home country, and one for the companies who employ them and are looking to provide healthcare coverage for wherever they are working around the world.

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Meet the insurtech: SafetyWing

Meet the insurtech: Archipelago

The need to secure accurate, high-quality data to enable real estate owners to better understand the risks of insuring their properties was the driving force behind the founding of Archipelago, a streamlined platform for commercial risk property information.

The company utilizes AI and machine learning to obtain data on properties from engineering reports, structural drawings, photos and more. "Machines are really good at seeing and extracting the patterns in a way that often humans would struggle to see," said CEO and co-founder Hemant Shah.

Focusing on real estate investment trusts and large corporate owners, the company delivers the detailed insight they need to evaluate the potential risks, as well as the information insurers require for underwriting.

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Meet the insurtech: Archipelago

Meet the insurtech: Ladder

An Amazon-like experience where you can obtain a policy in 10 minutes doesn't sound like the typical customer journey for someone looking to buy life insurance, but that's how CEO and co-founder Jamie Hale sees using Ladder.

"We're radically different than most other life insurance carriers," says Hale. "We found that being able to be accessible 24/7 and digital has opened the market to under 50-year-olds… The vast majority of our customers are fully digital."

Around the clock digital access is a major selling point for the company as it pursues its goal to make applying for and obtaining life insurance immediate, flexible, simple and smart.

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Meet the insurtech: Ladder

Meet the insurtech: Onuu

Offering a "personalized roadmap to a secure financial future," banking, credit and life insurance startup Onuu aims to transform access to insurance and financial services for lower-income Americans who are frequently neglected, according to CEO and co-founder Felix Ortiz.

Ortiz's goal is to "democratize access to insurance and financial products for the demographic segmentation that needs it the most, but that has often been overlooked because they either have a thin credit file or they live in a zip code that due to actuary data, they are a higher risk."

Promising to reduce the requirements and bureaucracy for obtaining life insurance, Onuu will launch this summer with policies starting at $12 per month, a credit card with a line of credit up to $3,000, a savings account and financial planning resources.

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Meet the insurtech: Onuu

Meet the insurtech: Broker Buddha

As the "TurboTax for commercial insurance," BrokerBuddha has expanded from working mostly with smaller insurance agencies when it first launched in 2018 to partnering with larger, middle market agencies today.

The company's strong growth has been driven by a technology platform that leverages online data capture to streamline the supplemental application process used by agents for submissions from clients.

"Almost every insurance submission or application typically requires some form of documents to be completed and signed," says CEO Jason Keck. "We are replacing that paper-based process with a seamless online experience."

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Meet the insurtech: Broker Buddha

Meet the insurtech: iLife

In the insurance industry equivalent of Hollywood's movie pitch in 10 words or less, Nelson Lee describes iLife, the tech startup he co-founded with Amit Lohia, as "Shopify for life insurance."

With this clear objective, the insurtech launched its digital hub for life insurance agents last year "with a website that would do basic insurance functions – quotes, customer relationship management and more," says Lee.

Since then the company has expanded its offerings to enable agents to brand themselves, utilize a range of quoting features, and select different carriers and kinds of underwriting, and can now boast of having more than 5,000 independent life insurance agents on its platform.

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Meet the insurtech: iLife