PolicyMe
PolicyMe makes it easy for Canadians to get personalized life insurance advice, compare quotes across Canada’s top insurers, and apply 100% online in a matter of minutes.
PolicyMe is equipped with an experienced team trying to change the insurance industry with a customer-first approach. Their proprietary life insurance algorithm assesses the users’ needs and recommends the best product for that person – regardless of commission structure. Life insurance is complicated but their advice engine can help find the best protection in the most cost-effective way.
While there has been a recent emergence of other online life insurance distributors, PolicyMe’s main competitors are still “in-person” life insurance agents who account for over 97% of the life insurance sales in Canada.
The company differentiates itself with its unique combination of advice/education, online platform & product savings. Key competitive advantages are:
- ‘Advice/education’ oriented approach
- Non-sales oriented approach – Branded as ‘understand your needs’ not as ‘buy insurance online’
- Affordability focused – users can save up to 50% on their life insurance by getting honest advice & comparing quotes (‘smart’ algorithms look to minimize the coverage amount needed by household by recommending what you need & not a penny more)
- Insights on every user journey, rich profiles to better understand user behaviors and reengage them in the future, conversion metrics to drive efficiency in marketing spend
Traction
PolicyMe has provided personalized life insurance coverage advice to over 41,000 Canadians and placed over $600 million in life insurance coverage to date. PolicyMe has continued its strong trajectory in 2020, growing by an average of 35% monthly since January.
As an independent broker, the company is constrained by the existing processes from each of their insurance partners, which makes it challenging to improve experiences at the later stages of the customer journey.
Another challenge PolicyMe face is changing the preconceived (and often negative) perspectives that Canadians have on the life insurance industry. Many of these notions are based on years of aggressive sales tactics from life insurance advisors with financial incentives that are misaligned with the best interests of consumers. For example, permanent life insurance is often sold to people who do not need it, most likely due to commissions being 10x that of term policies.
Team
Andrew Ostro, Co-Founder, CEO – Andrew has 10 years of experience in the insurance industry working as a licensed actuary and management consultant. He has advised senior executives at the world’s largest insurance companies on strategy, digital transformations, operations, regulatory adherence, and finance/risk.
Laura McKay, Co-Founder, President – Laura has 7 years of experience working in insurance & strategic operations as a management consultant. In 2017, she launched a successful initiative for the World Economic Forum focused on innovation in insurance, working closely with insurers, technology pioneers, and policy-makers.
Jeff McKay, Co-Founder, CTO – Jeff has 10 years of experience working for a large financial tech firm in NYC, providing fixed income pricing for millions of securities around-the-clock. In his role, he led a team responsible for transforming the product into a real-time offering using big-data open-source technologies.
Funding
In March of 2020, PolicyMe raised a $3.3 million round of funding from a syndicate of international and domestic investors, co-led by Consorcio – HCS Capital and Westdale Properties.
PolicyMe has successfully built a strong direct-to-consumer distribution platform, industry-leading life insurance recommendation algorithms, and an emerging brand in the Canadian financial services space. Through this, they have identified other opportunities to innovate across the value chain, which they’ll be working towards in Q4 2020 and 2021.
Revenue Model
PolicyMe is a licensed insurance brokerage and holds contracts with multiple insurance companies to sell their products. They receive commissions from the insurance companies on every sale made.
Details
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