Show HN: Lemonade – the world's first P2P insurance company

Post by curryhowardiso » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:05 AM UTC

omarish wrote: post #74

h4nkoslo wrote: post #25

This is wildly un-new. Mutual insurance companies have existed for literally hundreds of years. Oldest one I can find in 5 minutes dates to 1762, and if you include merchant insurance organizations, probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equitable_Life_Assurance_S...

Is that a bad thing? It just means that it's an existing market, done better. Your comment reminds me a lot of the first criticism of the iPod "less space than a jukebox" or the guy who berated Dropbox by calling it a dumb GUI to rsync.

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:14 AM UTC

mikeryan wrote: post #3

This looks awesome I might check it out. But the "P2P" branding is likely going to be confusing to a lot of people. In fact even after reading the explanation I still don't understand the peer to peer model in this context and I know what Peer to Peer means.

Post by ojgeojaga » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:34 AM UTC

samfisher83 wrote: post #24

It looks like these are the companies that are really insuring you: Lloyd’s of London, Berkshire Hathaway’s National Indemnity, XL Catlin etc. Basically they are buying a policy from one of those companies adding 20% and selling it to you. A insurance company works by spreading risk over a large area. By selling everything in NY they are increasing their correlation which raises risk. One of the reasons for the sub p…

Post by rubyfan » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 1:51 AM UTC

gilsadis wrote: post #56

x2f10 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will answer you as nobody else will. Hacker News users are interested in this idea, but don't want to divulge their actual address to get a "price quote". Ideally, they'd like to give their zip code and get a round-about dollar figure they can use to compare to their current pricing.

Fair enough. The reason we ask for your name first is because we want to create a more personal chat experience. We believe that buying insurance should not only be instant but also delightful.

Post by Jarwain » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #29

hujun wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the video ("The Science Behind Lemonade") linked on the homepage, it seems the key difference is this company take a flat fee while other insurance company "makes profit" from declining claim , so the Lemonade has no incentive to decline a claim which makes the claim process fast; and also they donate the extra profit to charity

That doesn't sound right -- a claim should be paid out or denied based on the veracity of the claim, not on the profit motive of the company. Sure, a for-profit company has extra incentive to vet claims, but so does Lemonade (since they dont want to be swindled). Traditional insurance companies make their margins on the cash they have to hold on hand.