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Assaf Wand, co-founder and CEO of Hippo
Insurance companies have long avoided disruption, but fintech players are coming on strong - and investors are taking notice. A conversation with Assaf Wand, co-founder and CEO of Hippo.
The CEO of fast-growing Hippo Insurance Services wants to change how Americans buy homeowners insurance, figuring it takes as much time and energy to tackle a big problem as it does a small one, so he might as well go big.
About Hippo
Since 2005, Hippo Insurance has leveraged and married modern insurance practices with modern technology, offering smarter products to meet modern demands. Hippo has also taken a proactive approach to home insurance, utilizing smart home devices to detect current and mitigate future problems.
Traditional insurance companies only interact with you when you’ve got a claim. Our insurance uses technology that could help prevent a claim from ever happening in the first place. Because, in our eyes the best insurance policy is the one that you never have to use. We’ve been pioneering a proactive approach to home insurance since day 1, and have introduced new services that are starting to become more wildly adopted by our customers. For instance, we offer new customers a complimentary smart device kit. When we first started offering the kits, the activation rates were quite low. In the past 12 months, we’ve invested more time in educating our customers on the benefits of smart device alerts to help them detect a water leak or unwanted motion, and activation rates have skyrocketed to 70%.
Describe a main achievement of your product?
Home insurance is a highly regulated and complex industry. Many insurtechs have emerged to solve specific areas of the insurance experience from underwriting to claims. We knew that to revolutionize the home insurance industry, we had to start from scratch, building our own proprietary products, policy management system, claims system–the whole tech-stack. This lets us customize the entire homeowner insurance experience, from your application to any claims you might submit instead of leaning on specific technology from other providers. It also makes us nimble and flexible. Let’s say we find a coverage gap or rate calibration for one of our products. Traditional carriers might take 6 months or more to make a change to your policy. Hippo’s technological advances allow us to make changes in real time, giving you immediate peace of mind.
Something unique about Assaf
When catastrophe strikes, Hippo customers know who to call: Assaf Wand, the $1 billion homeowners insurance startup’s cofounder and CEO - In times of duress, Wand has been known to give his personal phone number and email address to customers.
When asked about funding
There is no such thing as an easy funding round. If you want to raise money at the valuation that you want, with the terms that you want, from the investors that you want it will take time and effort.
At the end of the day, you need to raise money from whoever you can. Investors are a source of capital that a startup needs to access.
Investors are pattern recognition beasts. They will try and force your company into a specific pattern because that is what they know.
The de-risking that is done in insurance is not valued by investors. Finding a reinsurer, having a call center, using data to provide renewals is not valued by investors.
VCs have a fear of missing out! Before you start fundraising be sure you have all your materials ready to go, then hit up your connections and signal that you will close funding quickly. A “you snooze you lose” policy is your best friend.
What’s next for Hippo?
We’re really excited about what the future holds for Hippo. This past year we announced coverage in three new states, Washington, New Jersey and Virginia and plan to be available to over 80% of the US homeowners population by the end of the year. We’re also expanding the range of services available to Hippo customers from new levels of protective offerings with a more diverse smart device program and home wellness checkups from home maintenance platform.
Read more about recent news on the HIPPO IPO $5bn deal
About Assaf Wand
Assaf Wand is the CEO and Co-founder of Hippo, a Mountain View startup that is reinventing home insurance. Prior to founding Hippo, Assaf was the Founder and CEO of Sabi, which designed and produced elegant everyday products for the senior community. Sabi was acquired by Uribo in 2015. Before that, Assf held several executive positions including SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Foris Telecom and prior to that was a consultant with McKinsey and Company.
Mr. Wand holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a BA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from IDC Herzliya.
