Retreating to Higher (Ground) Value Packages
Traditional providers do still have an advantage. I spoke with another, non-brother-in-law, colleague of mine who is carving a niche of herself in business insurance market. And she’s doing it by providing that human connection and really taking the time to teach her clients about what they need.
Lemonade’s bot Maya is nowhere near capable of doing that. And, in fairness, AI, in general, is nowhere near capable of that yet. Also, if I were to guess, business insurance isn’t on Lemonade’s agenda anytime soon. So I believe my friend to be safe. For now.
And that gets us back to the third and final bullet in my email to my brother in law. If you are an insurance provider, you are about to see your franchisor pushing its higher-value/more customizable products (if you haven’t already). They’ll claim that these are where the margins are, and they won’t be lying. But what they won’t be saying, and they may not even realize, is that they are also ceding ground to Lemonade that they’ll never recover.
Look for the progress Lemonade is making in the industry to intensify in the coming years. They recently went through a successful IPO, and therefore have more available to cash to scale and drive marketing/sales campaigns.
But the question remains, is there anything that can be done to prevent industry disruption? And that’s the question we will examine that on the next and final page of the article.