InsurTech Startup Trellis to Team With FinTechs on Auto Insurance

Insurance tech firm Trellis will offer financial technology companies a new way for users to compare and purchase auto insurance, according to a Tuesday (Dec. 14) press release.

The company says it enables many businesses — and especially consumer FinTech applications — through its Savvy recommendation platform, calling it “the industry’s first end-to-end API solution to enable consumers to instantly compare and purchase car insurance within a partner’s app or website.”

Per the release, the company’s Savvy platform can be easily added to apps and websites, and consumers will be able to switch insurance providers without having to deal directly with the companies.

“Buying insurance is a complicated process that currently lacks transparency — consumers are tasked with loads of paperwork, fine print, and policy options they may not fully understand or know how to compare,” Trellis founder and CEO Daniel Demetri said in the release. “As a result, many are stuck with policies that are too expensive, and not tailored to their unique needs.”

Demetri also told Bloomberg that there was a “serious race to serve consumers holistically in financial services,” and that Trellis wants to make it so consumer finance services are essentially on autopilot.

This is all happening as U.S. firms, like Affirm and PayPal, are looking at ways to become “super apps,” or single destinations for a wide breadth of things like financial services and food delivery.

Trellis says that its platform “enables the integration of insurance into the broader world of personal finance.” The company’s functionality is available to certain U.S. customers in the Midwest and South through a partnership with insurance company Branch Financial, and that service is planned to go nationwide soon.

Trellis also plans to add more partnerships in the near future.

Auto insurance is seeing a boom of connected car data, with consumers sharing their data in exchange for better auto insurance premiums, based on their actual driving habits — very different from when the information was based on things like miles driven, location and demographics.

PYMNTS writes that Arity, which was founded by Allstate, is looking to partner with more automakers and companies in order to better understand driving behaviors and risks. Allstate will also use the data from Arity’s platform and sell it to other insurance companies, as the competitors would be using it anyway.

Read more: Selling Connected Car Data is Booming Business for Auto Insurers