The insurtech revolution started about 10 years ago, but its goal has changed since its inception. Originally looking to disrupt the insurance industry, insurtech has evolved to be an asset used by insurance carriers and agencies to improve and modernize the value chain.
While all insurtechs have the same long term goal, they each offer different services to get there.
We sat down with our COO, Geetha Sreedhar, to find out how Tarmika got to be the insurtech it is today.
How did the idea of a commercial comparative rater come to fruition?
When we saw how antiquated the commercial lines quoting process was (the amount of time agents spent on data entry to get a quote for commercial lines), we knew we could help them vastly improve it by bringing in modern technology solutions.
Why did we feel there was a need for our product in today’s market?
Agents and business owners are consumers too, and as consumers they are so used to everything being digital now. From how they order their food, clothes, and do their banking, everything has become digitized.
So for them to think they can’t also obtain insurance online doesn’t make sense. We believe the insurance industry is ready to make the jump, insurtechs just have to make the process easy and intuitive for them.
How and why did we make the transition from an RPA to an API system?
One reason was that RPA is slow; it takes about 7-8 minutes to obtain a quote. An API is much faster, returning a quote in close to 15 seconds. We adopted API when we saw carriers were beginning to build APIs for external consumption.
For carriers that don’t have APIs, we are helping them with their design process and creation of API frameworks. Since our APIs are open, we are moving the entire industry forward so they can be used to connect with multiple external parties and not just us.
Why have we partnered with other insurtechs? How has that helped our solution?
We are partnering with other insurtechs for internal processes. These partnerships help us roll out solutions that are more innovative and rapid. It gives us the agility to meet market needs in a robust fashion.
What does our company do to stay on top of innovation?
Tarmika follows a team based approach; our Monday mornings start with a team meeting to go over how we can improve. We always look at things from an end to end solution perspective.
We are constantly making sure that we use the best technology for developing solutions and improving the process.
Just like the insurtech revolution as a whole, Tarmika has changed over the course of its young life. What started out as a simple comparative rater has grown into a single entry solution designed to streamline the quoting process.
