Insurtech Branch Insurance has a strategic partnership with security and smart home solutions ADT to offer ADT home security customers discounts on their home and car insurance.
Branch Insurance CEO and Co-Founder Steve Lekas said in an interview with FinLedger that this partnership allows Branch to offer less expensive insurance to consumers.
“By offering meaningfully less expensive insurance for ADT, or any method, more people can be protected by the noble aspect of insurance,” he said.
The partnership fuses ADT’s monitoring services for intrusion, smoke, carbon monoxide and flood detection with Branch’s instant-pricing model to create insurance for those who use ADT’s services. Current and potential ADT customers could save up to 29% on premiums when buying home or car insurance with Branch, the companies claim in a press release.
The company explained in a blog post when customers choose to add ADT’s monitoring to their home they are reducing risk factors that can lead to home insurance claims, so by reducing risk of loss, Branch is able to offer discounts to ADT clients. Branch offers a base 8% discount on home, auto and umbrella insurance to ADT-protected clients through this partnership. Then, Branch increases the insurance discount incrementally depending on the security and smart home devices a customer has.
Founded in 2017, Branch claims to be able to provide customers with “an instant insurance offer” for bundled home and auto insurance “within seconds” using just a few pieces of information. The company has plans to take its rapid underwriting and quoting technology for home and auto insurance nationwide by the end of 2021, according to previous reporting. The company raised $24 million in a Series A funding round in July.
Strategically, Lekas said, Branch is an early stage startup while ADT is a large company.
“[ADT] has a lot more customers than we have,” he said. “We can do something particularly special for their customers, and ADT believes that. So very tactically in short order, it gives Branch great abilities to grow [and] to drive its mission forward.”
Branch recently launched in its sixth state, but the Columbus, Ohio-based company is “targeting over 80% of the US population before the year’s out,” Lekas said.
He could not specify which states the company would be expanding to. When asked where he saw this partnership in a year, he said there was no finite duration to it.
Going forward, Branch is looking to have more partnerships like it does with ADT. Additionally, the insurtech is planning to raise another funding round, but whether that happens in 2021 or 2022 is yet to be determined, Lekas said.
And this isn’t the first time Branch has graved the FinLedger headlines. A few months after Branch closed a $24 million in Series A round, CEO Steve Lekas spoke with FinLedger to talk about the company’s plans.
Lekas shared that, “Being the first frictionless insurance purchase allows Branch to reimagine the distribution model and bring insurance to consumers in moments of convenience.”
This new partnership with ADT appears to be exactly the type frictionless distribution strategy that the Branch Insurance CEO has in mind.
And Branch isn’t the only insurtech forming partnerships. Last week, Chubb and Revolut inked a new digital partnership “to drive relationships in the digital space”