Every so often we witness a tectonic shift within an industry that, while we may not know it at the time, completely changes the game. Think of the rise of ChatGPT by OpenAI, which ignited an overnight global stampede of companies scrambling to launch their own generative artificial intelligence solutions. Or consider the arrival of Netflix and its cascading impact on the media and entertainment industry. In the first act, Netflix upended brick and mortar video rental stores with a subscription-based, home-delivery rental service. In the second act, it brought the world streaming video, spurring countless competitors, forcing major broadcast networks to launch their own streaming services, and left cable providers calling emergency board meetings to grapple with “cord cutting.”
With our recent launch of Anywhere Insurance, Sure is ushering in a tectonic shift within the insurance industry. This industry-defining moment is not just because of Anywhere, but because of the pain points that Anywhere unlocks to get modern digital insurance programs off the ground.
For years, Sure has worked with global carriers and brands to launch digital insurance programs, and we have seen firsthand the agonizing challenges of working within the confines of the status quo. Our experience (and the experience of our partners) is what has led to Anywhere and our desire to prioritize Sure’s partners above the dated conventional practices of the insurance industry. Anywhere is shattering the insurance industry construct – and we know others will follow, just like others are now following ChatGPT into the generative AI craze and others followed Netflix into streaming.
The origin of Anywhere
Since our founding, Sure has been privileged to support so many digital insurance program launches with trusted enterprise partners. From insurance carriers and MGAs to automobile manufacturers, fintechs, and proptechs, our partners come to us because we have the best technology, years of ecosystem experience, and the insurance know-how to build and launch sophisticated digital insurance programs.
And yet, it’s still incredibly challenging to pull off. It’s challenging for us, but especially for our partners. With each program launch, we came back to the same nagging question: “What in the system and supply chain of insurance programs is making this so difficult for our partners?” In our experience, a big part of the problem is that our partners often have to work with as many as 30 different vendors in order to go from an insurance product idea to digitally selling insurance to consumers.
The status quo is such that everyone will have to go through multiple steps to get to the finish line, including building their filings, sourcing data, and choosing a software system – all the while waiting for approval of their filings, integrating the data, navigating software implementations, and so on. This can take years and the number of variables within each of these steps is enough to make any partner panic about the investment of time and money. Add in rules and regulations changes in each state, software systems updates, and then integrating third-party data. Taken together, the average time to market with the status quo is three years. Three years to go from filing to selling – that’s crazy in the age of streaming Netflix and generative AI.
As we continued down this seemingly humble discovery, it was like peeling an onion. We started to question the system as a whole. Chief among them, why are there only a handful of companies to work with that provide the data needed to support an entire industry? Why does it take several months to integrate that same data into any software? Why is integrating payments an entirely different workflow? Why is creating a seamless customer experience another step? Why do our partners experience additional pain when it comes to an API integration? The questions continued to mount.
Each of these is a layer of unnecessary complexity. It became painfully clear that what our partners need is a solution that can support lots of different use cases – such as an insurance product filing that is already integrated with the software that runs it. And that’s when the idea for Anywhere was born.
Freeing up the data commodity
There are a handful of companies that provide data and filings in the insurance industry, but there is one known monopoly that reigns supreme. As things currently work, our partners have to get their insurance filings and data from one incumbent in the market, then they are left to figure out the rest on their own. The traditional model is such that it’s incredibly time consuming and difficult to navigate. Despite these challenges, the industry has accepted this as the cost of doing business because of unfettered control by legacy incumbents. Until now, that is.
To date, no other company has spent years building a solution that empowers organizations that want to launch a digital insurance program with the freedom to get out from the control of a handful of incumbents. Our take: Insurance is broken at the filing level. Viable alternatives need to be an option in order to scale modern digital insurance programs and fix the problems being experienced by actual consumers looking for auto or home insurance in 2023 and beyond.
Anywhere was purpose-built so our partners can have the fastest time to market by avoiding all the friction that currently exists to build new insurance programs and then bring them to market digitally. It shouldn’t ever be this hard, and we’ve built an efficient, modern solution that eliminates the pressure on our partners. Organizations will no longer need to contract several consulting firms, invest in a lot of heavy IT work, or manage 30 different software vendors just to wait three years to get to market. No need for rating-as-a-service. No need for maintenance contracts. No need for system integrators that run up huge time and materials bills. We have packaged it all up to provide the most seamless route to bypass the pain and the antiquated processes of the status quo.
Anywhere is flipping the standard on its head by being the layer in between the monopoly incumbents and all the necessary integrations thereafter. What we have learned is that the three years it currently takes to go from concept to consumer involves repeatable steps. Anywhere is built as a plug-and-play game-changing solution to automate these repeatable, time consuming steps.
The need for Anywhere now
That status quo is failing consumers everywhere. Insurance premiums are rising, carriers are pulling out of states, and policy renewals are being denied. Consumers are finding it more and more difficult to secure the protection they need. Through no particular fault, the insurance industry is failing people. Why? Because the insurance standard hasn’t kept pace with modern times and everyone is pointing fingers at who to blame.
Anywhere is the catalyst for fixing the broken process of modernizing insurance. By thoughtfully building modern access to insurance products, we are leading the charge for the rest of the industry and solving complicated protection gaps for consumers.
Any brand, carrier, or MGA that wants to offer a truly unique insurance product to their customers or wants to enter a new line of business in the market can launch a modular digital insurance program within six months using Anywhere. Anywhere frees up the filing, data, and integrations while providing the best customer experience. Sure has eliminated all of the past friction of launching new insurance programs with Anywhere.
