Meet the insurtech: Marble
For most financial transactions, you get out what you put in. You apply for a credit card, you get cash back, you open a bank account and you accrue interest. When it comes to property and casualty insurance, however, investing in a policy is a one-way street. You sign up and start paying premiums and that’s pretty much it. No cash back, no rewards program, nothing. While most people see the current system as a minor inconvenience, Stuart Winchester, founder and CEO of Marble saw it as an opportunity to upend the online insurance experience.
“I saw that there was no centralized insurance platform for the American household. There was nothing like a bank account for insurance that tied your entire insurance picture in one place. On top of that, there was no concept of earning rewards that was equivalent to a credit card or a bank,” says Winchester. “Instead, you have lots of companies spending all their money on TV commercials. So I was always interested in this idea of pulling all your insurance into one place that you felt in control of.”
Stuart Winchester
In 2019, this epiphany led Winchester to ditch his general manager position at Better.com to launch his online insurance platform Marble, an integrated wallet in the insurance industry that offers a built-in rewards program.
Marble works by creating an online ecosystem where customers can shop policies from multiple carriers and manage existing accounts. Insurance carriers within the ecosystem pay Marble for every policy that the company sells and Marble invests a portion of those fees back to the customer. These “Marbles” can be redeemed for things like premium payments, gift cards and cryptocurrency.
“People are excited because they can come in and shop for insurance, lower their rate, and get all their insurance accounts organized. On top of that, for the first time in the insurance industry, they can get rewards that they could put into something that will grow in value.”
Creating value for customers was one of the reasons why Marble decided to partner with Tyler Winklevoss’ Gemini crypto exchange as many Marble Pay customers desired a crypto-based rewards program.
“We had a large segment of users who wanted crypto and we were able to deliver it to them. My team talked to all the largest crypto exchanges and had them pitch us, putting them through a matrix– seeing [which company] we think has the best tech, the best APIs, and the best security and compliance features. Gemini came out on top because they take compliance and the regulatory side of things very seriously, and their tech was really good.”
Eventually, Winchester hopes to grow Marble from an insurance aggregation platform to an all-encompassing insurance operating system– one where everything from managing payments, to setting up telematics software can be integrated via the Marble ecosystem.
“Our goal is to not only tie all your insurance into one place but to make it easier for you to stay safer in one place– like flood monitoring,” says Winchester. “So, not only could you have one platform for all your insurance, that platform should handle how you proactively protect the things that your insurance covers. A lot of people have that for their finances already– they monitor your credit score, they let you know if you have an overdraft, etc. But in insurance today, none of those things are unified in one place. You should be able to see you and your spouse’s life insurance and take stock in it the same way you take stock in your finances. That’s the holistic picture that we believe adds value.”
