Slice, an InsurTech startup that has recently made a splash with a series of moves such as a major capital campaign, insurer partnerships, and the launch of on-demand policies aimed at “sharing economy” players such as Uber drivers and Airbnb proprietors, provides on-demand insurance for anyone who uses their home or vehicle to generate income.
Slice CEO and co-founder Tim Attia hopes to broaden their product offerings to meet needs in a variety of insurance market niches.
Attia says “there’s the new way of doing insurance…startups doing things in a new way from the incumbents,” and the old way, and that his company hopes to reach out to players in the sharing economy where workers are no longer employed directly by a firm.
According to Attia, a JP Morgan Chase study conducted last year to find core information about salaries discovered that salaries varied up to 30% from month to month in four groups. He says those fluctuations mean “people are making money in non-traditional ways.”
Many people are developing new insurance methods, but they are still relying on standard homeowners’ or renters’ policies. As a result, they are not addressing a new risk. We wanted to address a new threat… We wanted to focus on the on-demand worker, (people who) make money by using a personal asset — their home, their car. Someone in the new economy is operating a personal automobile as a business. So you’re in a situation where the property is personal but the liability is commercial, which is unusual.
“Our view was, the only way to get there was to rethink insurance. We couldn’t rely on any existing system or process,” Attia told PropertyCasualty360. “So we designed a new policy form. We developed a new set of underwriting and pricing guidelines. And we don’t have an insurance application at all.”
Take our home insurance policy, Attia. When someone goes online, they must register with an email address. We inquire about their address, and they register with it. Then we respond with a quote. We have all of the information we require. We are aware of the property’s construction type, roof type, and projected costs. We know how big the property is. Everything has been gathered. We simply do not require you to tell us in an application and sign at the bottom. We believe the application was simply a tool used by agents to get facetime with people. However, if you can accurately obtain all of the information and data for the quote, the application is unnecessary.