ITL:
I’d ultimately like to get your thinking on how digital insurance sales can become and how much face-to-face interaction customers will want. I’m also curious about your thoughts on the role of comparison sites, given your recent acquisition of Compare.com. But I’ll ask you to start us off by telling us a bit about the Insurify journey.
Snejina Zacharia:
Insurify started in 2016, with the mission to demystify insurance in the U.S. and make it super easy for anyone to search, compare and buy insurance in one place. We built the platform with all the intelligence and technology in place to provide the best matching of consumers with carriers based on their risk profiles and appetite and to let customers do online, digitally, what they would do with an agent on the phone.
We are set up as a full-service insurance agency, and our mission is to be the preeminent and most trusted virtual insurance agent in the industry. I really hope that, at some point, we drop the “virtual” part because I believe we are building the future of insurance agencies in America. We are very much an agency at our core. We just happen to be exceptionally data-driven and technology-driven.
ITL:
While lots of people talked about disintermediation in the early days of insurtech, that talk has gone away. How has your thinking evolved about the need for human agents?
Zacharia:
We don't force people into experiences. We enable the types of experience that they prefer. If a customer is interested in doing everything fully digitally, then it's our job to make that experience as quick and easy and intuitive and data-driven as we possibly can. However, I also believe in the power of human agents and of building relationships. There is a segment of users that will always prefer to have that personal touch with a human agent, so we have a full-service agency. They all work from home, which lets us grow at the fastest rate and look for the best agents with the greatest expertise without the limitations of a specific location.
So, if you ask how I think about the future of agencies, I think that, number one, they're all going to be very digitally savvy. They will all provide tools that allow for users to do a certain level of self-service to the extent that they're comfortable digitally.
Then there will be the hybrid model, where people can do part of the work online, then continue with a personal experience. Or they can just do it all on their phone.
The one piece I am skeptical about concerns face-to-face interaction. Video, yes, but maybe not face-to-face. I think people are very, very busy. They value their time. So, the more we can automate that agent experience, the better for the agent and the better for the user.
What we have focused on is making sure the work of the agents is not order-taking but value creation. We want, whether by using prefilled data or other methods, to make buying a policy take minutes, not a half-hour or an hour on the phone.
ITL:
What is your geographic footprint, and where do you see yourself going from here?
Zacharia:
We are about 150 people. About 40% of us are in Boston. We have a large concentration in Richmond. We have some concentration in Seattle. And we have the Bulgarian hub, as well.
ITL:
I find it interesting that you think face-to-face is maybe never going to be necessary. That certainly is my preference. The more I can do on my own, the better. More generally, what would you describe as your vision for agencies, say, five years out?
Zacharia:
I believe the industry will continue to grow organically, but there will also be a lot of consolidation. Compare is the first company we've acquired, but we are definitely looking at making more acquisitions in the next few years.
For us, our goal is to have all types of insurance policies in the U.S. that could be served and purchased through Insurify. Today, we are mostly P&C. We also have a life insurance comparison product, which is doing great, but our vision is really to be in all personal lines and including some small business commercial in five years.
We will be looking also to potentially evaluate internationalization opportunities. We are super excited to bring on the Compare team, which is a pioneer in comparison shopping, and also Admiral as a board member. Admiral has extensive experience building out international businesses like Insurify across different countries.
With optimization of AI and generative AI, I think there will be more tools available to companies like Insurify that are a little bit more technologically advanced, to optimize the user experience for purchasing across a plethora of different insurance products.
ITL:
Thanks, Snejina.
About Snejina Zacharia
Founder and CEO of Insurify Snejina Zacharia has over 18 years of experience in entrepreneurship with consumer internet and enterprise software companies. Previously, Snejina was at Gartner where she established and grew three lines of business, each with millions of dollars of annual revenue across the USA and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Before that, Snejina led Sales and Marketing at different technology start ups from mobile web messaging to CRM systems in the financial industry. Snejina holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
