A new Boston-based (actually Newburyport) insurance industry review and rating platform has officially launched this month. The company which already has received $2 million in funding and has been in beta-mode since August 2016 is aiming to bring a standard rating metric for the insurance industry.
Called Clearsurance, it is the brainchild of Co-founders Michael Crowe and Todd Kozikowski, both start-up veterans in the insurance and technology marketplace. Mr. Crowe’s previous firm Crowe Paradis, LLC was purchased by a subsidiary of Brown and Brown in 2010, while Mr. Kozikowski has been involved with various start-ups including Yabidu, Newforma, Silknet ( which was acquired by Kana) and Unica (acquired by IBM).
A new endeavor aiming at bringing transparency to the insurance industry
According to the Co-Founders, the impetus behind the creation of Clearsurance was to create a tool to bring clarity and transparency to insurance consumers, carriers and agencies via a standard rating system.
“No one wants to spend time thinking about their insurance policies, but everyone wants to have confidence in their choices,” said Michael Crowe, Co-Founder and CEO. “Clearsurance can help insurance shoppers the same way Yelp and TripAdvisor advise restaurant and travel consumers: Improve the overall customer experience through better transparency and crowdsourced insights and ratings.”
“There is clearly no dynamic, industry standard for comprehensively rating an insurance company, and everyone should know their insurance providers’ reputations for honoring their policies and processing claims,” said Kozikowski, Co-Founder and President. “Consumers should not purchase insurance based solely on price or casual referrals. Clearsurance can bring greater clarity to consumers so that they make informed, knowledgeable decisions about one of their most critical purchases in life.”
The science behind Clearsurance
Since the website does such a nice job of explaining the science behind Clearsurance’s ratings, we thought we would share it here:
In its official announcement, the company also highlighted its own effort toward transparency, which will include disclosing and publishing “…its own formula underlying the ratings so that consumers and insurance companies can easily understand the process and avoid any mystery or manipulation.”
“Insurance companies are excellent at measuring your risk, bringing together all kinds of data points about you before offering coverage. Now, we’re turning that concept around, and helping consumers measure the risks of insurance companies. There’s a new question to ask before buying insurance–how does it rate with Clearsurance?”-Co-founder Michael Crowe.
Agent and Broker ratings to come in 2017
While similar in vein to other rating sites like AgentReview, Clearsurance is already launching with nearly 10,000 reviews of more than 210 insurance companies. Where it differs from other sites, however, is that it is also inviting insurers into the experience, by offering them the “a direct channel” in which to communicate answers to consumers questions, issues and concerns.
While initially focusing on personal lines, plans are in the works to add Medicare supplemental and employee benefits reviews and rankings.
In addition, Clearsurance has already been the process of collecting insurance agency and broker reviews with plans to publish them in the sites next release in early 2017.
Thank you Coverager for the tidbit…
We wanted to officially thank Coverager for sending us this little tidbit. For those who do not know about Coverager, it is a new website from Shefi Ben-Hutta that covers all things InsurTech and is a must-read for those interested in the subject. Sign-up for your free copy here.
