How the Metromile/Hippo bundle came together

Metromile and Hippo’ s plan to bundle their home and car insurance, announced on May 17, came together because of a mutual interest in leveraging digital to streamline the insurance buying process for customers, executives for both companies told Digital Insurance.

The bundle is available in eight states -- Arizona, Oregon, Washington, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The two companies have similar, modern approaches to insurance, but plan to stick to their own lines in the near term. That's where the value of the agreement comes in, says Rick McCathron, president of Hippo, about why they chose Metromile for their bundle. Hippo wants to continue being a vertically aligned company for the homeowner.

“The decision point is ‘should we offer lots of different products for our customers to buy or should we focus on a single product, a single vertical, that we think we can make the most different to them and then partner with companies who do the same things in other areas?’” said McCathron. “So, we decided to really focus on that holistic home protection and partner with best in class companies on things that our customers need.”

The companies’ similar approaches to technology made the partnership decision easy, says Metromile communications director Rick Chen. The two companies are planning to use API technology to manage the bundle. Customers will be able to use the same interface to manage both policies in the future, but will have to use each company's app for the matching policy in the near term. Hippo’s “forward-thinking” approach to technology made the bundle concept exciting to the team at Metromile.

“It makes sense for us to say, ‘Wow, Hippo, you're doing it really well. Let's work together and integrate to be able to kind of succeed on both ends,’” said Chen.

A partnership between the two brands makes sense, according to Mark Breading, partner at Strategy Meets Action, who contrasted the partnership decision with insurtechs deciding to expand their insurance offerings.

“Either one of them could have chosen to start moving into the other lines by themselves, but why not try this model?” said Breading. “I think they’re both well-respected brands and probably can bring forward a nice offering into the marketplace.”

In the future, insurtechs will likely create new innovative collaborations in ways that are already happening, said Breading, using the example of USAA acquiring Noblr. Although, he adds the caveat that not many insurtech carriers that focus solely on home insurance, as Hippo does, so a partnership that’s exactly the same may not happen again.

“There’s every type of partnership you can imagine out there and there’s a lot of innovation, so nothing really surprises me,” said Breading.