The latest installment of Agency Checklists’ occasional column on the latest happenings in the insurtech community in and of interest to the Massachusetts insurance industry.
Gather Gone
According to a report from Coverager last week, Boston-based Gather has shut down its operations. The former insurtech company, with the tagline “The way insurance should be”, was founded by Michael Ritchie in 2015 in to revolutionize the insurance-buying process for small businesses. This included creating a Peer to Peer platform that would help small businesses to self-insure.
For those who are interested, here is the company video:
As for former founder Michael Ritchie, his Linkedin page says that he is the Head of Risk at Baltimore-based Blispay.
SinglePoint slated for November
Boston’s original #insurtech, Boston Software, has announce that it is putting the finishing touches on the first version of its new SinglePoint.
Barring a major setback, we expect to begin rolling out the first version of SinglePoint to agents in November. Our plan is to keep adding features and functionality to SinglePoint through the end of the year (and likely January) to make it as robust as WinRater, but easier to use and always available online.
We will support both WinRater and SinglePoint during this transition phase. Agents will be able to use either WinRater or SinglePoint to comparative quote Auto and Home policies. At some point in late January or February, we will retire WinRater. We will give you plenty of warning ahead of time.
In the meantime, you can see the new SinglePoint at MAIA’s Big Event Trade Show. Stop by our booth for a demo.
If you can wait that long, here is a screenshot of the new login page.
To view more screenshots, check out the Boston Software blog here.
Lemonade debuts “Zero Everything”
Lemonade Co-Founder Shai Winniger announced the debut of “Zero Everything” this week. The online renter’s insurance company says that Lemonade customers “…will no longer need to pay deductibles and have their rate increased when filing claims. That’s right: No deductibles. No increase in pricing. Nothing.”
The insurer says it created Zero Everything in response to the two biggest complaints from insureds regarding their reluctance in filing claims with insurance – that the claim is normally below the deductible and fears of having their rates increased.
In addressing these concerns, the insurtech company says that is no longer the case for Lemonade insureds. “Regardless of the value of your claim, with Zero Everything, you’ll get the full amount needed to replace your items with new ones! Someone stole your $500 bike? We’ll pay you $500 to get a new one!”
To read more about the details on how the program works, please continue to Shai Winniger’s Medium post here.
There are, of course, some caveats to the plans, which Shefi Ben-Hutta did a nice job of detailing in a Coverager email last week, entitled, “Coke Zero, Pepsi Zero and Now Lemonade Zero.“