At a time when technologies move from “emerging” to “emerged” in the insurance industry at a higher rate than ever, the startup Insurify made waves late last month with the beta launch of its online insurance agency and its Expert Virtual Insurance Agent – branded Evia, for expediency.
Insurify allows customers to take a snapshot of their drivers’ license and sent it via text message to Evia, who uses image capture, machine learning and third-party data, as well as a back-end connection to insurers and agents, to return quotes tailored to that driver. Company founder Snejina Zacharia says that while many of these concepts were in production at different levels in the industry, her company can provide a more updated digital experience by combining them.
“We are taking a very specific technology like image processing, and there’s a lot of potential behind it, and integrating with multiple data providers to be able to verify information about that image,” she says. “There’s a lot of science behind our recommendation engine and the ranking algorithm we have built for carriers.”
It’s the algorithm – the artificial intelligence, as Zacharia describes it, that makes Insurify stand out. That technology is proprietary, and incorporates elements of what she calls “conversational commerce,” an emerging discipline in marketing writ large.
“The idea is taking the regular way of searching for websites toward a more conversational based experience – you answer a few specific questions, from anywhere you want to be,” she says. “You might be talking to a machine, but you don’t even notice.”
Though Insurify has a website platform at insurify.com, and consumers can begin a quote there, the real jewel in its crown is the SMS – text-message based – interaction. Insurify’s goal is to bridge the gap between digitally focused consumers and insurers and large agencies, by adding a new layer of interaction, Zacharia says.
“We have no call center, we are a tech platform,” she says.” We understand that the likelihood of certain carriers to serve certain consumers is low, and we have an amazing opportunity to make things right for those consumers.”
