This article was produced in partnership with Earnix
Mia Wallace, of Insurance Business, sat down with INSHUR’s Milan Chavda to discuss the startup’s partnership with Earnix.
Behind every great collaboration is the moment of truth when a company identifies the business case for bringing on board a trusted partner to accelerate its growth strategy. For INSHUR - the startup bringing insurance protection to commercial drivers powering the on-demand economy across USA, UK and Netherlands - that moment came at a crucial juncture for the firm’s evolution – as the opportunities available to the team came up against limited tech resources.
INSHUR had its own pricing engine, noted Milan Chavda (pictured), director of pricing & analytics at INSHUR, but due to its limited resources, encountered a few difficulties in deploying that effectively.
“The engineering teams had to constantly choose between making pricing changes or developing a new feature,” he said. “Both carried intrinsic value so there were always discussions on which was prioritised. Further, pricing investigations required the experience and capabilities of an insurance specialist which then had to be integrated into the development process.”
“We decided that we were spending a lot of time on this when we shouldn’t be and we needed to find a platform which would remove a lot of these pain points. And that’s where Earnix came in.”
The INSHUR team had worked with Earnix in the past and having seen its capabilities first-hand, had been consistently impressed with the accessibility and transparency of its solutions. Earnix keeps non-technical and non-pricing people in mind when designing its solutions, Milan said, creating functional and friendly UIs that enable greater usability.
“That transparency piece also means improved auditability, which is really important in a regulated environment such as insurance,” he said. “And the final bit that drew us to Earnix’s proposition was that the team at Earnix really knew their stuff. From the get-go when we spoke to them, it was quite clear we shared some similar values with them – such as being innovative and easy to work with. So, there were all kinds of things that made us gravitate towards Earnix.”
Examining why the time was right for the partnership, Milan emphasised that pricing is such a critical part of the insurance product.
“Customer behaviour is constantly changing along with macroeconomic factors such as inflation - this requires us to be agile to ensure we keep prices competitive for our customers, while at the same time protect our insurance partners”, he said, “It’s important to have a tool that allows you to stay ahead of the curve. And that speed and agility piece is only becoming more crucial.”
He also highlighted how Earnix’s support has enabled INSHUR to win new business and release new products, pleasing the insurtech’s carriers and third-party providers. Making inroads into traditional markets such as commercial auto with new innovative insurance products demands that speed and agility, he said, and he would advise anybody considering their next steps to maximise those capabilities by utilising the right tools.
When INSHUR initially launched with Earnix, it was able to quickly transfer its UK rideshare product from its previous pricing system to Earnix, with the support of the provider’s team, and it has since made several seamless product enhancements to this offering. Making those changes has been straightforward as Earnix already has these features, he said, and the platform’s inherent flexibility means that INSHUR is able to carry out pretty much any new functionality.
“It's quite funny because our engineering team are always surprised when they're asking me questions about what Earnix can do and I’m always replying ‘yes’”, he said. “In fact, I don't think there's been a time where I've said no which I think speaks volumes as to the amount of things we can do with Earnix.”
“[Since we] initially launched with Earnix, we’ve been able to launch some brand new products including our UK commercial van product towards the end of the last year. Having Earnix just gave us the confidence to do this with speed and agility. We previously spent a lot of time just building the pricing and underwriting side, but having Earnix in place means we were able to build all that within a matter of days.”
Creating the whole pricing and underwriting algorithm within just a few days was an incredibly positive experience, Milan said, but the greatest compliment he can pay the entire process is that when the product went live, there were no issues at all with the pricing functionality.
“It was a real change to before Earnix when you’re kind of scrambling around on the launch date trying to fix a load of issues, and you probably break something else in the meantime,” he said. “And since the product is gone live, it's been really successful, we've been able to make a lot of tactical price changes, which is usually less than a day's work now.”
Looking back at the implementation process, Milan emphasised the need for forward planning and for Earnix’s partners not to be afraid to ask for help. The Earnix team are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, he said, so, instead of spending time trying to figure out the issue, he recommends that teams get in touch with the Earnix team and lean on their expertise.
“The other thing that’s really impressed me about Earnix is how they keep improving their products and being innovative,” he said. “I’ve been looking through some of the latest releases of Earnix and noticed a new raw mapping feature has been added, which we were actually planning to build ourselves. Having that in Earnix means the feature we were going to build can be replaced with another feature in our roadmap, which saves us a lot of time.”
Touching on the outcomes of the insurtech’s partnership with Earnix, Milan pinpointed INSHUR’s increased agility and time-to-market speed as critical advantages of the join-up. The team have been able to make quicker pricing changes and to answer pricing queries sooner than ever, he said, while testing times and new product and feature releases have also been sped up. It has given INSHUR an edge in this competitive market – and now the partnership is entering a new phase as the firm looks to build out a machine-learning model live within Earnix.
“The next step for us is that we have most of our products on Earnix and this year, in particular, we’re looking to get all our products across,” he said. “We know how powerful it can be, we know there are new features that haven’t been released yet and we’re confident that the innovative nature of Earnix means they will be released in the future, which is going to help us all quite a bit.
“We’re already using it for all brand new product launches. And we've got a few things in the pipeline this year, which again Earnix is going to be at the forefront of it. We want to be able to use Earnix as a key part of our decision-making within the business. There are loads of different ways we can use it and that’s the goal and the plan for this year.”
Find out more about the unique range of products and services available from Earnix today
INSHUR delivers innovative embedded insurance products for on-demand platforms across the US, UK and Netherlands. You can read more about them here.
Milan Chavda joined INSHUR in March 2019, becoming director of pricing & analytics in August 2022.
