iptiQ is Transforming Business and Powering Progress in America

Millions of families in the U.S. do not have the life and health insurance coverage they need—and in many cases, when they do have coverage, it’s not enough. iptiQ entered the U.S. market in 2016 to address this challenge. Passionate about simplifying this process, iptiQ is minimizing the insurance protection gap and leveraging data and tech to disrupt the industry. Together with its partners, iptiQ is making an impact on the lives of the people and families it protects.
A global company, iptiQ creates simple products that focus on easy consumer journeys and a streamlined buying process. The company offers customized life, health and property & casualty (P&C) journeys and utilizes its platform to provide holistic protection for individuals and families. It is successfully working to close the growing $26T insurance protection gap in the country. Central to its success in the U.S. is the simple design and affordable products that are easy to understand and create engaging customer journeys, making the end-to-end buying process seamless and accessible.
The company is rated “A” (Excellent) by A.M. Best and A+ by the Better Business Bureau. And together with its partners, iptiQ is dedicated to protecting more families and closing the insurance protection gap.
In a brief interview, Kali Marino, Chief Financial Officer of iptiQ Americas, talked about the company’s ambitions and its ace delivery of its insurance products. She also explained how the company is creating simple journeys that deliver high-value products that are nine times more efficient than others. Read on for the excerpts from the interview.

Q. What was the motivation behind starting the company?

Swiss Re is a leading provider of reinsurance, insurance and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer. It is working to make the world more resilient. iptiQ was formed from Swiss Re’s ambition to protect more people and their families by making insurance simple and more engaging. We saw the opportunity to address the growing $26T insurance protection gap and created a global risk-tech company, iptiQ, to digitalize insurance solutions, making the buying process easier for everyone.
We are one of the very few startups that reside in a global, financially secure organization and one of the largest reinsurers. We have achieved an incredible unicorn valuation.

Q. What makes your full range of products or services unique?

iptiQ creates simple products that focus on easy consumer journeys and a streamlined buying process. Our platform offers access to customized life, health and P&C journeys, and provides holistic protection for individuals and families.
Our insurance carriers offer a portfolio of life and health insurance products, including term life, whole life, final expense, accidental death, critical illness and Medicare Supplement health insurance. We are committed to help more people secure the protection they need by digitizing the process, while exceeding expectations in products, processes and pricing.

Our best-in-class digital insurance platform enables robust integrations for our partners, who can easily “plug in” their systems or external sources. The platform can host multiple insurance lines, giving our partners and consumers the ultimate flexibility to choose what products they want to buy and how they want to buy them.

“We are committed to help more people secure the protection they need by digitizing the process, while exceeding expectations in products, processes and pricing.”

Q. How do you transform businesses?

iptiQ’s business model is based on creating strong partnerships to sell insurance through trusted brands. Leveraging data and technology enables us to create scalable digital insurance solutions. We pride ourselves on delivering the right products, at the right cost, to more people, at top speed.

Our digital platform expands the vertical lines of insurance, including life, health, and P&C. This end-to-end omni-channel solution is faster to market, delivers targeted results and is powered by a leading industry team to ensure success. We are a true one-stop shop for our partners’ insurance, technology and reinsurance needs.

We focus on process, people, team and culture, and provide a wide range of capabilities throughout the entire B2B2C value chain, from marketing and sales capabilities; through the lifecycle to onboarding; customer campaigns and communications; and beneficiary outreach programs and campaigns. Over time, we have been able achieve and drive meaningful growth with sustainable results.
Q. How do you ensure that the delivery of your services happens at top speed and at the right cost?

In designing life insurance products, we conduct discovery research on the utilization of product features and make certain that we create products that make sense for customers—not just products that add riders or complex features that bump up the cost to the consumer. Our life insurance products are more affordable and easier to transact, and more importantly, easy to understand. And in the future, as we learn why the utilization of a product feature is low (but would still benefit a customer), we will try to make the feature more understandable, more automated, and price it lower with a more efficient process. Rather than complicate the initial sale, we will add features (for example, riders) as an upsell option, so that customers can determine whether they better understand the specific feature of the rider and confirm they can afford it.
That is just one of the many ways we are using data and analytics to feed the decisions we make to drive our business forward and effectively protect our policyholders. We are always putting our customers first and trying to do what’s best for them. They are why we’re here.

Another example of accelerated services relates to paying timely claims. Our primary promise to policyholders and partners is to pay contractually agreed claims, so being able to address and manage claims quickly and efficiently is also important to us. We leverage and optimize data for fraud screening, for example, to help streamline and enhance our overall underwriting process. Data is at the center of our business, to improve the buying process, meet modern consumer expectations, and continuously improve experiences and results.

Q. Could you tell us about the impact your company has had in the U.S.?

Millions of families in the U.S. do not have the life and health insurance coverage they need—and in many cases, when they do have coverage, it’s not enough. iptiQ entered the U.S. market in 2016 to address this challenge. We are passionate about simplifying the process, addressing the insurance protection gap and leveraging data and tech to disrupt the industry.

Together with our partners, we are continuing to make an impact on the lives of the people and families we protect. We have designed affordable life and health insurance offers that are customizable and accessible to consumers—and our omni-channel platform provides a simple and streamlined buying process. It’s something we’re really proud to have built. From here, we will iterate and improve on that solid foundation, while keeping the customer journey and overall experience top of mind.

“Millions of families in the U.S. do not have the life and health insurance coverage they need—and in many cases, when they do have coverage, it’s not enough. iptiQ entered the U.S. market in 2016 to address this challenge.”

Q. Why are your customized life and health insurance solutions so important to protect customers and their families?

The process of buying life and health insurance can be overwhelming and complicated. We design simple, affordable products that are easy to understand, and create engaging customer journeys that make the end-to-end buying process seamless and accessible. Collectively, this helps us develop a great customer experience. We have never viewed our offers as one size fits all, and it has really helped us ensure that we continue to meet the diverse and growing needs of our policyholders.

Q. How does your platform and technology create a seamless user experience?

Our B2B2C digital insurance platform is 100% cloud-based, modular and fully customizable. Because of that, we are able to leverage technology to add new products, new carriers and on-board new distribution partners quickly. We optimize the customer experience and end-to-end conversion through a range of capabilities and tools that offer total flexibility, whether it’s connecting to our own systems or leveraging external sources. We’ve shown that it is possible to create simple journeys that deliver high value life insurance products quickly and as much as nine times more efficiently.

Q. How important are partnerships for your company?

As a B2B2C business, our partners are invaluable. We build strategic partnerships to effectively serve our customers together. They challenge us to be agile and innovative, working together to provide the best experience for our policyholders.
Our partners provide their brand, customer base and marketing. We provide a digital insurance platform, data-driven products and affordable coverage in return. We are working to close the insurance protection gap, together.

Q. What does the future hold for your company?

iptiQ is championing change in the life and health insurance sector and progressing forward, building a more empowered future for policyholders and their families. We are innovating and leveraging data, analytics and tech to meet customers’ expectations in an increasingly digital world and streamlining the process. Our focus on customer centricity will also play a vital role in how we operate, with customers remaining at the very core of our actions, developments and decision-making.
We are revolutionizing the life insurance industry by accelerating the process of identifying customer needs, building solutions to meet those needs and delivering on our promise.

Kali Marino, CFO, iptiQ Americas

Before joining iptiQ, Kali spent 16 years with Swiss Re, bringing with her a unique blend of finance and strategy experience. Through her leadership, iptiQ is expanding its portfolio of insurance offerings across an affiliate carrier this summer. She’s helping transform life insurance and leading the operational development of new products and services that will further optimize digitization and simplification for policyholders.

“Our insurance carriers offer a portfolio of life and health insurance products, including term life, whole life, final expense, accidental death, critical illness and Medicare Supplement health insurance.”