Snapsheet is an insurance technology company that can handle multiple elements in the claims process: Virtual appraisals after accidents, claims software and payments once a claim is resolved.
The company’s tech can reduce the claims process to a matter of minutes, according to Eric Waldinger (pictured), the company’s chief revenue officer.
After paring back during the pandemic, Snapsheet and its cloud-based technology has surged in recent months. The company resumed hiring and has done so aggressively. More than 430 people work for the Chicago-based company today, 200 of whom have been hired over the last several months. “We are in full growth,” Waldinger said. Snapsheet launched initially in 2013 under another name, before the company refined its concept and chose its current name a year later. Investors have committed more than $100 million in venture capital so far in multiple rounds from investors including Nationwide, Liberty Mutual and Intact Ventures, among others. Customers include seven of the top 10 carriers, and more than 100 of the others, Waldinger explained. Types of customers vary. Beyond carriers, there are insurtechs and clients in the self-insured retention employer space. Like many start-ups, Snapsheet has not been profitable yet but that could change soon. “We are break-even moving toward profit,” Waldinger said. Rules The “secret sauce” to Snapsheet’s technology is its rules and decision engine, Waldinger explained. “It really is about our automated workflows” Waldinger said. “When a claim comes in without having to code or to do any code, you can set up a series of rules that allow you to do … things.” That includes workforce automation, when a claim comes in and you want to make sure the claim gets to the right adjuster without manual intervention. Additionally, Waldinger describes a series of automated tasks, based off the rules engine, that allows it to automate up to 90% of what would have been administrative/manual physical tasks. The company’s technology is also centered around a pure Software as a Service (Saas) platform, which allows for upgrades across the board without IT implementation costs, Waldinger said. With these open APIs, the company has also integrated more than 70 different vendors into the system, he noted. Another important piece is the data that Snapsheet collects. “Everything in our system is tracked – every interaction, whether it is a physical person interaction, … or interactions that happen on the back end,” Waldinger said. “Everything is tagged, and our [business intelligence] allows you to leverage our technology or your own [business intelligence] technology to really understand” the customer dynamics. Integration steps Snapsheet can have its technology environment ready for clients within several weeks. “One, sign a contract. Two, work with your … IT team to do a traditional policy integration,” Waldinger said. “Any policy system out there we can integrate with.” The third step – is to start using the systems. Clients can build APIs and integrations along the way, but a typical installation takes 45 days, Waldinger said. “Thirty of those 45 [days] are really making sure you’re putting your business rules [in] and [there is] training involved,” he added. “It’s a very simple, open API process.” The average time from signature to implementation can take 12 weeks, Waldinger said. A precise timeframe depends on business needs and when the client wants to launch, how much training is required and when the system goes live for active users. “The only thing that takes any time is training, and creating the workflows,” he said. “The actual setup could be done in minutes.” Partners Snapsheet has depended on partnerships, in part, for its growth. The company currently has 72 and counting. Some of the bigger ones include Snapsheet’s partnership with Socotra, a cloud-native insurance core platform. Last September, they announced plans to build a joint platform in the cloud. Combining the companies’ API-driven policy and claims tech stacks is designed to help insurers launch “modern and flexible next-generation products in as little as 10 weeks,” the announcement noted at the time. Other partnerships focus on safety, claims subrogation and more. Snapsheet plans to announce as many as five more over the next eight to 12 weeks, Waldinger said, “with some of the best partners that you can think of.” “We want to partner with the best and brightest and make sure that our customers have an ability to use our claims system and bring in any other vendors that they want,” Waldinger said.
