People postpone the idea of buying insurance because it is such a boring and complicated task to compare policies. But Cover combines plans from 45 insurance companies in a single market, making it easy to find the best one for your car, home, rental, business, personal property, pets, jewelry and more. Now Cover is building powerful incorporation tricks, such as a driving school that allows you to get lower car insurance rates, and a way for Shopify dealers to sell warranties for your items.
The potential to use technology to run circles around the old insurance brokers has attracted a new $ 16 million B Series for Cover, led by Arjun Sethi of Tribe Capital, who ran the Series A and is part of of the startup's directory. The round was joined by Y Combinator, Social Capital, Exor and Samsung, and brings the company to a total of $ 27.1 million in funds.
"I nsurance is not much different from being a white-collar racer, where the rake of the house is too high and the dollars at stake are only hundreds of billions in the US, "says co-founder and CEO Karn Saroya." This, all to the detriment of ordinary people, who consider insurance as a tax, we are here to change that perception. "
Saroya and his co-founders have deep ties. He went to high school with Anand Dhillon, is engaged to Natalie Gray and hired Ben Aneesh at the team's previous startup, a high-end fashion market called StyleKick that was eventually hired by Shopify. " We were launching ideas about what we wanted to do after StyleKick / Shopify, running hackathons on weekends, we created a couple of different applications, but Cover, the MVP, where we only asked potential customers to take pictures of the things that they wanted to ensure, we were surprised, "says Saroya. "Our clients sent us tours of their homes, pictures of their dogs and videos of themselves washing their cars. "When you encounter behavior that violates your expectations in consumers, it's usually when you bend."
Karn Saroya, Co-founder and CEO of Cover
So they built Cover, where they do not have to improvise Endless insurance websites or standby waiting. You download the application, choose your item, indicate how much you paid and where, provide some photos or videos of your condition with your camera equipped with TensorFlow and Cover will review your insurance partners and find you the best offer instantly. You can easily see what is and is not covered, learn how to make claims and send a text message with an agent if you have questions. For example, I was quoted quickly $ 5 per month to secure my new iPhone against damages, but not for loss or theft.
Coverage earns between 10 and 35 percent of the premium you pay. Your annualized premium already exceeds $ 8.5 million and is growing by 30 percent per month. Thanks to its low turnover business model, easy cross-promotion of products, low training requirements of customers and the need to constantly update existing subscriptions, Cover is beginning to look like a software business as a very efficient service.
The big question remains if Cover can constantly find the best rates for customers, so they do not doubt their quotes and look elsewhere. It will have to overcome multiple insurance providers, such as State Farm and Geico, as well as emerging companies such as MetroMile that address specific insurance verticals with mobile applications. To really earn big profits, Cover is developing its own internal insurance plans. But that will put you under the constant threat of securing the wrong risks and end up paying too much.
"We built Cover because we saw the opportunity to build elegant products that they could meet." Prices and customer experience in a way that no primary insurer can, "Saroya concludes. bringing the service to the mobile and making it a perfect part of owning something, Cover could ensure you're insured, even if insurance is the last thing you want to think about.