Stripe doubles insurance client list

Payments technology provider Stripe has doubled its insurance sector client list in the past two years and processed about $8 billion in insurance payments in the past 12 months, according to company officials.

"Enabling insurance companies to build and scale out globally to land in new countries or regions and to be able to transact and take transactions very quickly is a huge part of what we do," said Max Roberts, revenue and growth leader at Stripe.

Stripe counts among its users Pie Insurance, NEXT Insurance, Cuvva, Luko and CoverWallet. "Building insurance products for today's businesses requires an immense amount of time and resources," said Eric Harnden, vice president of partnerships at NEXT Insurance. "Being able to quickly onboard customer bank accounts with Financial Connections allows us to stay nimble so we can continue to equip our customers with a seamless, simpler insurance experience."

Founded in 2010, Stripe has worked with some insurers and insurtechs for years, like CoverWallet, according to Roberts, who attributed its recent increased insurance business to global economic trends and larger carriers looking to scale. 

"Large insurers are thinking about how they consolidate, how they streamline processes, how they address new markets and how they scale globally. It's been super exciting for us to engage with," he said. "Insurtechs are using Stripe to grow and innovate globally and scale up globally. But we also see very large enterprise users using Stripe now to either spin up new businesses or start to simplify and consolidate their larger businesses."

Roberts said Stripe is delivering insurers the ability to improve their customers' experiences, and to lower processing and back office function costs. Amanjot Khaira, chief product officer at brokerage insurtech CoverWallet, reports efficiency gains since it began using Stripe and Stripe Connect in 2017. CoverWallet collects customer payments, but has to split those between trusts to pay carriers and its own commissions, which requires multi-party payments.

"There's no manual person in the accounting department trying to reconcile all of the payments and send them across," Khaira said. "On a daily basis, it's flowing through automatically, so there's a huge efficiency play."

Stripe's platform is based on payments technology operating on a large, global scale, with optimization tools on top of that technology, Roberts explained. "A lot of our customers are using our billing and invoicing products to help engage with their customers to drive increased revenues," he said. That engagement can raise renewal rates for insurers.

Stripe built up its insurance business in part through word of mouth, according to Roberts. "Many insurers work with each other and supply each other's projects," he said. "To embed those and be able to manage that, reconcile it and offer new services and new products to users was really exciting too."