CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Insurify (insurify.com), an AI-powered insurance comparison platform that makes it easy for people to save hundreds-to-thousands of dollars per year on car insurance, today announced that, after several successful pilot programs earlier this year, it is expanding into home, renters, and life insurance comparison. To help drive this expansion, the company also announced that it has raised $23 million in Series A funding, led by MTech Capital and Viola FinTech, with participation from Nationwide, Hearst Ventures, and MassMutual Ventures — and that it has hired the former SVP of Engineering at KAYAK, Gene Shkolnik, as its CTO.
Eight in ten Americans live paycheck to paycheck, with insurance being one of the top monthly expenses.1 People are looking for ways to save, yet shopping for car insurance is still a laborious, confusing, and frankly, painful process — especially for the economically disadvantaged and the Millennial and Gen Z generation.2 Enter Insurify: a company using machine learning to make buying coverage easy for everyone, and saving customers an average of $489 per policy on their car insurance. Now, Insurify will be expanding to help people navigate the stressful world of home, renters, and life insurance as well.
Insurify has doubled revenue year-over-year consistently since it launched, with 125,000 policies closed worth over $10B of insurance coverage. The company was co-founded by husband-and-wife Snejina and Giorgos Zacharia (the latter is also the CTO of KAYAK), and Tod Kiryazov, who leads product and growth. Their mission is to fix the broken insurance distribution system by building the smart virtual insurance agent of the future. Insurify delivers value to both the customer and the insurance company by removing marketing and agency costs, protecting personal information, and empowering both large and small insurance companies by providing access to new customers they might not otherwise reach. (One little known fact is that it’s often the lesser-known regional insurers that have the highest customer satisfaction scores.3)
It works like this: simply go to Insurify.com, answer a few quick questions about yourself and your needs, and within two minutes Insurify will present you with actual, bindable insurance quotes from numerous top national and regional companies, tailor-fit to you and your preferences — which you can then purchase on the spot online. It’s easy to add family members, multiple cars, or customized coverages to get the highest coverage for the best price. The intuitive user experience and AI-powered recommendation engine will walk you through complex decisions, such as why you may want to go with an auto plan with more liability coverage if you own a home. Best of all, Insurify is free to use, and officially licensed and operating in all 50 states.
“Across different products and markets, price comparison sites have empowered consumers by driving price transparency and significant cost savings. We believe the distribution of auto insurance in the US is at an inflection point as consumers are increasingly purchasing it online, and that Insurify is positioned to be the industry leader that helps buyers find savings. Snejina is a talented leader who has built an outstanding team. MTech Capital is very excited to become a shareholder,” said Kevin McLoughlin, Partner and Co-founder of MTech Capital.
“Founded only 2 years ago, Insurify marks our 4th investment in the insurtech space, which we're very bullish about,” added Prof. Daniel Tsiddon, Founder and General Partner at Viola Fintech. “We believe the insurance space is still suffering from high inefficiency and low penetration of automation and that Insurify’s solution provides a massive opportunity to make insurance purchasing simple, seamless, and cost effective for the consumer. With the founding team’s superior execution skills and with the new funding coupled with our global LP base of leading insurance companies, they are on the right track to fulfill their vision of disrupting the insurance space.”
How Insurify Reinvents the Insurance Shopping Experience:
- Data-driven approach to coverage and carrier recommendation: Insurify invented RateRankTM, proprietary, patented software that analyzes patterns and matches each user’s risk profile with the best and most affordable insurance companies and coverage for their unique profile.
- Price and quality comparison: Although price is one of the most important drivers for switching insurance, people also care about reviews, customer service, and benefits. Insurify is the only platform that helps consumers make qualitative and quantitative insurance decisions and recommends the insurers that are the best match for the consumer. The platform has collected over 100,000 reviews from customers.
- Discounts & exclusive prices: Insurify has partnered with insurance companies to offer exclusive prices not available through independent agent channels or direct on carrier’s sites. It has also aggregated 1,861 different types of insurance discounts and makes it easy to understand all possible discounts available on a specific policy, so they get the best possible deal.
- API integrations with insurance companies: Insurify has direct partnerships and API integrations with most of the top 10 carriers in the USA, and many regional carriers, allowing consumers to buy directly from Insurify online rather than being sent around to different company websites to fill the same information again and again.
- Privacy: 5.6 billion robocalls were made in November 2019. The majority of insurance comparison sites currently operate on a “lead-generation” business model and don’t even show quotes, meaning they take personal information you enter to retrieve “quotes,” and then sell it to others to flood consumers with texts and phone calls. Insurify never sells your information to third parties, and will never call you unless explicitly requested.
- Wallet: Manage all of your policies — car, home, and life — in one secure place. Insurify also saves your personal information, so you never need to enter it twice when looking for new policy options, or to check if a better plan has become available.
“Our mission is to make insurance shopping transparent, and to empower everyone to make insurance decisions on their own without the help of an agent, where incentives are rarely aligned. For the average American, saving a few hundred dollars a year is significant. We are changing people’s lives every day by helping them cut their monthly burden and also helping protect their families and loved ones,” said Snejina Zacharia, Co-Founder and CEO of Insurify. Snejina is a first-generation American and mother of two. Only 1% of CEOs in the insurance industry are women and Snejina is one of them.
“I’m a single mother on a budget and this is perfect. Cheapest coverage I could find & couldn’t be happier!” said Kelly S. from Sacramento, CA. “I have 3 teenagers to insure. [Insurify] helped me find the cheapest quote,” said Israel W. from Greentown, IN . “Instead of going from site to site and putting my personal information I went to Insurify to do all of that at once and get accurate quotes from many companies all for free,” said Gentaya K from Hammond, IN.
About Insurify
Based in Cambridge, MA, Insurify is a one-stop-shop comparison platform for car, home, and life insurance, helping consumers save time and money on their insurance coverage. With over $10B of insurance coverage purchased since 2016, Insurify has grown 2x year-over-year and won several insurance industry awards, including: ACORD’s 2018 “Top 10 Insurance Leaders and Insurance Disruptor Awards,” The Digital Insurer’s “North America InsurTech Startup of 2019,” and FinTech Global’s “2019’s Most Innovative InsurTech Companies.” Visit Insurify at www.insurify.com and get updates at https://facebook.com/insurify.
About MTech Capital
MTech Capital is a venture capital firm with offices in Santa Monica and London investing in technology-driven companies that focus on the insurance industry. We define the insurance sector broadly to encompass all of the businesses that insurance companies are in, including asset management, wealth management and other financial services. Our two founding partners have 45+ years combined of FinTech venture investing, insurance, and insurance investment banking experience and have a long family history in the insurance industry — the 4th generation. We are redefining venture capital by creating a unique ecosystem for InsurTech entrepreneurs and strategic investors. https://www.mtechcapital.com/about
About Viola FinTech
Viola FinTech is a cross-stage venture fund that invests globally in FinTech companies alongside leading venture investors with the mission to bridge the gap between the worlds of financial institutions and innovative startups. With over $120 million AUM, the fund is led by an exceptionally experienced team with strong backgrounds in banking and entrepreneurship and is backed by selected leading global banks, insurance companies and asset managers, including Scotiabank, The Travelers Companies, Inc and Bank Hapoalim. The fund is part of the Viola Group, Israel’s leading tech investment group, with over $3 billion AUM. Visit Viola at https://www.viola-group.com/about/.
About Hearst Ventures
Hearst Ventures makes strategic investments in companies operating at the intersection of media and technology. Starting with its investment in Netscape in 1995, Hearst Ventures has grown to become one of the most active and successful corporate venture funds. Notable investments include Pandora, Brightcove, XM Satellite Radio, Eink, Sling Media, Exodus, Broadcast.com, Hootsuite, IGG and Buzzfeed. Hearst Ventures (hearstventures.com) is a unit of Hearst Corporation, one of the nation's largest diversified media and information companies.
