What this insurtech says are two ways of being better than the average broker

If you want to be better than the average brokerage, try explaining coverages through the use of examples and try not making consumers wait for days for answers, the co-founder of an insurtech advises.

“Insurance can be somewhat stuffy and not a real pleasant experience,” said Pierce Krol, co-founder of Grande Prairie, Alta.-based Insurely Inc.

Insurely, which announced its launch Sept. 22, places homeowners and renters insurance in B.C. and Alberta and plans to expand to other provinces in the coming months. It aims to provide insurance coverage in less than 10 minutes.

“When someone calls in, they often want an answer right away. For the most part, we can provide that. But if we can’t, we will be very transparent. We will say, ‘Hey, we’ve got you; we will get back to you within the hour.’ If we promise something, we want to deliver it at all costs,” said Krol, who was asked by Canadian Underwriter how brokers can stand out as better than the industry average in providing home insurance.

“For us, we try to remove the barrier to insurance, which is often technical language. We generally try to explain through examples and paint a picture,” said Krol.

“If there is something along the lines of liability, sewer backup and overland water — every term has an explanation but we try to break that down in English, where we say, ‘With overland water, that is really water entering your premises over land,’ versus the very technical coverage you would find in an insurance glossary.”

Insurely is trying to “reverse engineer” companies such as Disney and Starbucks when providing customer experience.

All insurance coverages offered by Insurely are arranged for by Insurely Inc. and underwritten by a number of licensed Canadian insurance companies. Insurely is compensated by a policy fee and/or commission on all insurance policies sold and renewed on behalf of the insurance companies it represents, says Insurely.

Insurely aims to let customers do the entire process online but they can talk to someone by phone if they want to. Its technology lets them populate digital documents automatically.

“There are those who still prefer to buy insurance in person, via mail or fax machine. But at Insurely, our audience is generally looking for a simpler option,” said Krol.

Some insurance companies communicate by fax because it’s the path of least resistance, said Krol.

“I am not saying [faxing] is the wrong way of doing business. As long as business gets completed, it’s okay in its own right.”

But Insurely does not even have the ability to send faxes.

“A lot of what we do is online. So if somebody’s going to send us something, we can upload it into our system in PDFs and document everything. It’s a little bit smoother and a little bit quicker for us. Fax machines are just not something that integrate with the platform that we’ve built.”

Feature image via iStock.com/