You now don’t have to leave Facebook anymore to shop for car insurance.
Insurify, an artificial intelligence-powered insurance comparison service, launched a Facebook Messenger chatbot on Thursday that lets you shop for car insurance quotes from within the messaging platform.
The Cambridge startup, one of BostInno's 17 startups to watch in 2017, also announced it has raised a new $4.6 million round of financing led by the corporate venture arms of MassMutual and Nationwide, bringing total funding to $6.6 million. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate its growth and hire more employees.
Since launching in January 2016, more than 1.5 million people have used Insurify to shop for insurance. And it has seen more than 40 percent month-over-month growth in the number of customers buying insurance policies on the service, founder and CEO Snejina Zacharia told me, and that figure is set to double in the first quarter of this year.
The company claims it can save customers up to $400 on their insurance premiums, which Zacharia said has helped Insurify grow through word-of-mouth.
“It creates a network effect of people using the site and telling their friends and coming back after a year for renewal,” she said.
What has also helped the drive the company’s growth is its data-driven approach. Zacharia said Insurify has direct integrations with its carriers, which gives the company full visibility into whether a shopper ends up buying insurance or now. That, she said, allows the company to continue to optimize its algorithms and best performing keywords.
The company’s service allows people to compare insurance quotes from multiple carriers using a set of “proprietary software algorithms that analyze patterns and match each user’s risk profile with the best and most affordable insurance companies and coverage.” It also has virtual insurance agent called Evia that provides insurance quotes through text message.
Zacharia said the new Facebook Messenger chatbot is powered by the same artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies that runs Evia, and it lets customers make a number of queries.
"Our goal is to be the one-stop shop for all insurance shopping."
With more than 20,000 car insurance-related chat conversations in its system, the bot can let users compare multiple quotes, subscribe to alerts for lower insurance prices and upload pictures of their licenses plates. The bot can also ask questions an insurance agent would normally ask when someone is looking to get a new plan.
“The more data we gather, the more intelligent we can build the model,” she said.
Zacharia said the chatbot will eventually expand to other messaging platforms. Insurify is also planning to build a product for Amazon’s popular Alexa voice assistant.
The 15-employee company also plans to add other kinds of insurance over time. Next year, Zacharia said it will add home, rental and motorcycle insurance. Insurify will also eventually add life insurance.
“Our goal is to be the one-stop shop for all insurance shopping,” Zacharia said.
