Lemonade has quietly debuted term life insurance, according to its website.
The New York-based InsurTech appears to be going the soft-launch route without major promotion of the launch, after first disclosing its plans for the coverage in November. Lemonade is adding life insurance to existing offerings in the U.S. that include digital rental, homeowners and pet insurance.
“We just started rolling out Lemonade Life, a Term Life insurance that’s fully digital, requires no doctors or needles and is actually fun to get! In the next few weeks, we will learn and iterate, and then open it up for everyone,” a spokesperson told Carrier Management via email.
Lemonade’s website promotes the coverage as completely digital, with no physicals, in a process that takes about five minutes. “Generally healthy” people between 21 and 55 years of age can apply, though the company cautions that applications with a history of heart disease, cancer “or other life-threatening conditions” may not be able to receive insurance. Policies start at $9 per month, and customers can cancel at any time,
The company’s life insurance sign-up page explains the insurance is sold through Lemonade Life Insurance Agency, a sub-producer of Bestow Agency, LLC. Coverage is issued by North American Company, which sells life insurance and annuities and is a member of Sammons Financial, the website notes.
During Lemonade’s 2020 earnings presentation in November, CEO Daniel Schreiber had emphasized that an outside company would be taking risk on the term life policies, without mentioning specifics.
“The user experience will be very much a Lemonade experience but the underlying policy will be on somebody else’s paper,” he said. “To the consumer this will be largely a transparent issue.”
Shai Wininger, Lemonade’s co-founder and chief operating officer, tempered expectations during the presentation, acknowledging that success with life insurance isn’t guaranteed.
“It is noteworthy that we’re placing a bet on term life even though we’re not certain it will be a winner,” Wininger. He added that “other tech-enabled insurance companies have struggled to make the economics of digital acquisition work. …We offer no guarantees that we can do better.”