Rebel with a cause: Lemonade CEO calls for radical change

Are insurers facing a “Wikipedia moment?” The short answer to this intriguing question, New York City-based homeowners’ and rental insurance company Lemonade Co-founder and CEO Daniel Schreiber recently told a rapt audience, is that elements of their business model are facing such a turning point. And this could have huge implications for an industry that technology is increasingly transforming.

Schreiber, who presented the closing keynote address at National Underwriter’s Annual Insurance Executive Conference, held in New York City, posed this query to the session’s attendees as a warning. His message: If they don’t revamp their customer-facing web portals and mobile apps, and their adversarial relationship with customers, then they stand to lose business to competitors. Not least among them are tech-savvy, millennial-attuned, peer-to-peer companies like Lemonade, which is spearheading an innovative approach to the delivery of homeowners’ and renters’ insurance.