Let’s be real. The insurance industry has barely evolved since Benjamin Franklin introduced the concept in the late 1700s.
You’d think after three hundred years and a market size of $1 trillion in the United States alone, insurance companies like MetLife and AIG would have nailed it. But they haven’t. Instead, they’ve left millions of Americans paying toward deductibles they’ll never use.
Once known for consistency and stability, insurance companies have quickly found themselves at a crossroads — either stay the course or adapt to change (as seen in the banking, transportation and the food services industries).
Ideally, it’s the latter.
With millennials on track to spend more than $200 billion by the beginning of 2017, bold and scalable moves need to be made if insurance companies want to avoid becoming the next print publisher.
So, how can insurance companies act fast and intelligently? The answer is simple: microinsurance.
Follow The Lead Of Key Investors
Since 2010, investors have funneled more than $2 billion in venture capital into the insurance-tech industry; they are betting on startups’ new approaches to a landscape that has remained virtually stagnant.
Sequoia Capital recently took a step forward in microinsurance — small, rapidly underwritten financial protection against a specific risk over a relatively short period of time. The firm recently invested in Lemonade, a startup focusing on bringing peer-to-peer insurance to the masses.
Perhaps the leading voice for insurance companies won’t be a gecko or a pig anymore, but a unicorn.
Felicis Ventures-backed Metromile lets drive
via techcrunch.com