Podcast January 15, 2020

How Haven life has reinvented buying term life insurance

Shortly after the birth of his first daughter, Yaron’s dad tapped him on the shoulder:

“Now that you’re a father, you have to go buy some of this stuff.”

(“This stuff” was life insurance.)

Here’s how Yaron thought this would go:

He’d Google “life insurance,” become a 15-minute expert on the options, and then make a decision. In his mind, within half an hour, he’d walk away from his computer, and never really think about it again.

But Yaron hasn’t forgotten about life insurance since that day.

Now, that life insurance purchase attempt led him to co-found Haven Life, an insurtech company that’s reinventing how you buy term life insurance.

I interviewed Yaron on the Payments Innovation podcast about how Haven Life is changing the life insurance space. Here’s the highlights from that interview:

Buying term life insurance was not easy

Yaron thought it would be simple purchasing life insurance, in the same way most purchases are made these days. Modern consumers sit down at a computer, perform their own research and educate themselves on options, then make a decision. 

Yaron even had a leg up: He was a software developer from the fintech space who knew a lot about asset management.

But even with his fintech experience, 2 things surprised Yaron about purchasing term life insurance: 

  1. How hard it was to understand the product in relation to his needs, and how hard that information was to obtain through the sales process
  2. How difficult the transactional process was

Yaron thought that purchasing life insurance was probably a 30-minute task, maybe a 60-minute task at the most. It turned out to be about 60 days for him to get policy in place.

Even with modern technology, starting a life insurance policy usually still requires sending a lot of paper, downloading plenty of pdfs, making phone calls, getting a health history, etc.

Using modern tech, Haven Life aligns with customer expectations

With that experience and his fintech expertise as fuel, Yaron set out to change the way consumers purchase term life insurance.

Haven Life calls themselves an “in-house startup at MassMutual.” In a nutshell, they sell policies that are issued by MassMutual. They’ve redesigned and re-architected the entire way you purchase fully underwritten term life insurance.

Now, you can go to your computer, and learn about the product in a simple, easy-to-understand way, apply completely online, and get a response very quickly. In some cases, you can get a policy in place without ever even having to do a medical exam.

How Yaron defines success

With all his strides in the term life insurance space, I asked Yaron how he defines success. Here’s what he said:

“The most important thing for us is to have customers get the coverage they need in a way that meets their expectations.”

Yaron’s insights into the future of insurtech

Of course, I wanted to know what the future of insurtech holds.

One huge area that Yaron said life insurance agencies are starting to consider is the customer-agency relationship and how that evolves.

Traditionally, the interactions a customer had with their life insurer was limited to their monthly or yearly bill.

Now, the agencies are considering how to create meaningful, engaging, relationships all year round. 

Example of engagement: Haven Life Plus

As an example, Yaron’s instituted Haven Life Plus, a free set of tools a consumer is given when they purchase insurance:

  • A free online will
  • A free cloud area to store highly sensitive documents online 
  • Discounts at CVS Minute Clinic

Their main goal of customer engagement is to simply create a better customer experience. But of course, additional engagement also leads to potential new expansion of product offerings: Recently, Haven Life released AgeUp, an annuity option based on the same premise: Simple online experience, innovative product.

To find out more about Yaron or Haven Life

Find him on LinkedIn, or go to HavenLife.com

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here

Until next time!

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