Nationwide Announces $100M Investment in Innovation
The 91-year old insurer announced this month that it will be making a $100 million dollar investment in innovation. The aim is to help spur new initiatives to address the changing needs of consumers both in the insurance and financial services industries.
Nationwide’s core mission is to deliver value for our members by protecting what’s important to them,” said Nationwide CEO Steve Rasmussen. “This organizational change allows us to focus on emerging businesses and invest in startups that align to that mission. At the same time, we want to anticipate the future needs of our members and improve current processes and offerings to remain best in class.”
With that, the insurers says the money it has allocated with help it focus on creating product offerings that will help its insureds:
- Live comfortably in retirement
- Meet their insurance and financial needs in novel and digital ways
- Protect their data and digital assets
- Protect them in the evolving area of mobility
Nationwide has already become active in the innovation scene with the launch of new products such as Guaranteed Retirement Income from Nationwide, its new Amazon Alexa integration for Smartride and its strategic partnership to digitally distribute renter’s insurance with Sure.
It is also investing in insurtech via Nationwide Ventures. This insurer’s venture capital firm begin in 2016 already has invested in a number of insurtech start-ups, including Cambridge-based Insurify.
Insurify CEO To Speak At IoT USA Summit
Speaking of Insurify, the Cambridge-based start-up’s CEO, Snejina Zacharia, has just been confirmed as a speaker at this year’s IoT USA Summit.
Taking place in Chicago from November 30th – December 1st, the IoT summit claims bills itself as “…the biggest event focusing on the radical changes that the internet of things will make across P&C, Health, Life, and Commercial insurance in 2017 and beyond.” In addition to Ms. Zacharia, Coverager’s Shefi Ben-Hutta is also slated to speak.
For more information or to register, check out the IoT USA Summit website.
To learn more about Insurify, you may be interested in Agency Checklists March 14, 2016 interview with Ms. Zacharia entitled, “A Q&A With Cambridge Start-Up Insurify- The Site Aiming To Be The Virtual Insurance Agent of the Internet.”
Boston-based Quilt now live in Massachusetts
Boston-based Quilt is now offering renter’s insurance in the Bay-State. The online digital insurance platform announced this summer that it is now officially “live” in 9 states, including Massachusetts.
Launched in the summer of 2016, Quilt was founded by four co-founders coming together, partially from the world of insurance and also from the world of online marketing to create a “radically simple” online insurance platform for the millennial generation.
For a more in-depth look at Quilt, its co-founders, and its mission please refer to Agency Checklists March 7, 2017 interview with Quilt Co-Founder and CEO Blair Baldwin entitled, “A Q&A With Boston-based Insurtech Quilt And Its Quest For Radical Simplicity In Insurance.”
Lemonade also goes “Live” but in a different way
While Lemonade has expanded to more states this summer, it has still yet to arrive in the Commonwealth. With that said, however, we still thought our readers would be interested in learning that the company has just launched the first “live” insurance policy. Here is a reprint of the company’s announcement along with a video they made to show how it works:
Today, we’re announcing a first of its kind insurance policy. One that puts the power formerly reserved to brokers and agents in the hands of all Lemonade customers!
When we first entered the insurance industry, we knew one of the biggest problems with traditional insurers was the endless amounts of red tape and long wait times. That’s why we committed to ‘instant everything’ since day one.
From the world’s first 90 second sign-up to our world-record-setting claims process, we’ve hit some pretty exciting milestones, but that was just a preview of what we’ve got cooking.
The Old Paper Policy
Up until today, if a customer wanted to change their deductible, coverage amounts, or add a new valuable they just bought, they’d have to contact their insurer’s customer support and explain their issue. Then, they would need to pay for some changes, and probably get a new policy sent to them in the mail (snail mail of course). That’s where the red tape and long wait times come in, and where the industry, new or old, startup or multi-billion dollar big corp, is at right now.
As far as we know, no other insurance company allows their customers to modify their coverages or even cancel their policy on their own.
Today’s release is a great example of the reason behind our decision to take the longer, harder path in becoming a full stack insurance carrier, rather than a reseller. It also explains why we bet on building our own technology instead of taking the easy path of buying old-school IT systems (the ones that run most insurance companies in America today, and the startups that resell their insurance).
Introducing Lemonade’s Live Policy™
Even if you buy renters insurance directly from the likes of GEICO or Progressive, the only part that’s direct is taking your money and sending you a policy. Everything else requires customers to contact customer service — which we all know can be… painful.
That sucks. So, in the last couple of months we’ve been working hard on the second phase of our policy, turning it into a ‘live’ document that can easily be modified without involving an agent!
With Live Policy, Lemonade customers (existing and new) can now make changes to their coverages and more, whenever and wherever they are! It’s actually easier to change your Lemonade coverages than it is to pay for your latte. Just open our app, go to your policy and start playing with stuff!
Here’s a list of things you can now do with your existing policy:
- Change deductible
- Change personal property limits
- Change liability limits
- Change loss of use limits
- Change medical payments to others limits
- Add/remove your significant other
- Add/remove spouse from your policy
- Add/remove your landlord
- Add/remove your property manager
Why are we the only ones doing this?
Moments like these are the reason why we chose the hard way – becoming a real insurance company. It would have been a walk in the park to slap on some pretty UX [Agency Checklists: “UX = user experience design] over a centuries-old insurance carrier.
But we started from square one, and built an insurance company from the ground up to address the very issues that turn people away from insurance. But doing so takes more than changing the way we market insurance, or even changing the very business model of insurance. It requires a dynamic focus on the issues our customers – and every insurance customer – face every day. It requires a commitment to tackling pain points, even (and especially) when it means questioning precedent.
This exciting new update is a part of a series of new features we’ll be releasing in coming months that will make insurance even more enjoyable, affordable, and instant.
So, as of today, when you buy an insurance policy from Lemonade (or already have one), you no longer need to contact our team in order to change your coverages, add valuable items and even cancel your policy! It’s all you… with a little help from our beloved AI Maya of course 🙂
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This post was originally posted on the Lemonade Blog.
