Insurify: The New Era of Insurance Distribution
By Gabby Munoz, Hearst Ventures
In the always-on, connected world of commerce, a surprising number of insurance sales are still being made offline. Personal auto insurance is a $230B+ industry in the U.S., with over 75% of polices still being sold through an agent. A combination of regulatory, technological, and institutional barriers has impeded the proliferation of real-time quoting and online insurance sales in the U.S. — this is in spite of significant online penetration in other markets (2/3 of auto policies are sold online today in the U.K.) and clear consumer demand for online buying (75% of consumers start shopping for auto insurance online but only 10% ultimately purchase due to the high-friction experience).
The combination of increased customer demand for online buying, as well as the increasing competitive threat from so-called “direct-to-consumer” insurance carriers like Geico and Progressive, are compelling “legacy” insurance carriers to upend their own, agency-led distribution models in favor of online-first experiences. As carriers continue to invest in their own digital experiences, they are breaking down some of the technological (and institutional) barriers that have prevented third-parties from quoting and binding insurance online.
We at Hearst Ventures believe that the ability to quote and bind insurance in real-time online is an innovation that will overtake the historically inefficient lead-gen model that has become prevalent in this market and enable a leading insurance marketplace to become the dominant way that people shop for, purchase, and manage their insurance coverage.
Our newest investment, Insurify, is such a marketplace. It integrates with leading carriers to offer 10+ real-time auto insurance quotes per user and to bind a policy online in minutes. For the customer, Insurify provides a transparent and streamlined shopping experience, without the help of an agent. On average, Insurify saves an insurance shopper 5 hours comparing quotes and $450 per year on policy premiums. For the carrier, Insurify leverages marketing technology and intelligent matching algorithms to source new customers they might not otherwise reach. Unlike lead-gen platforms, carriers don’t take marketing risk on customer leads or incur high agency costs on a sale. Instead, Insurify gets paid only when a user buys a policy.
While there are a few companies trying to tackle this massive market opportunity, Insurify has differentiated itself on team and performance. The company was founded by the wife-and-husband team of Snejina and Giorgos Zacharia, as well as Tod Kiryazov, who now runs product for Insurify. Snejina, CEO, has shown herself to be an outstanding leader, assembling a stellar team and instilling a strategic, results-oriented mindset into everything that Insurify does. Tod, a veteran in digital product design and experience, has introduced a culture of customer-obsessed innovation that now permeates the organization. The latest addition to the executive team is CTO, Gene Shkolnik, who brings a wealth of marketplace expertise from his time as SVP of Engineering and Product Development at KAYAK.
The results speak for themselves as Insurify has doubled its growth year-over-year and closed $10B of insurance coverage since it was launched in 2016. We at Hearst Ventures could not be more excited to back this fantastic team at such a pivotal time for the evolution of insurance distribution — welcome Insurify to the Hearst Ventures family!
