Revolutionizing Landlord Insurance

Leah Venn: Hi, welcome to Invest Smart with Steadily. I'm Leah Venn, the Chief Marketing Officer with Steadily, and today we're joined by David Tulig, who is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. David leads our engineering and product teams, and today we're going to dive into how Steadily's technology is different from what we see with other landlord insurance providers.

So David, I'd love to start with acknowledging that Steadily is often highlighted for its advanced technology, particularly in how it differentiates from other insurtech companies. Can you shed some insight on what really sets us apart in that way?

David Tulig: Yes, so what differentiates Steadily is our ability to provide instant bindable quotes within seconds. We're doing that by using a lot of real-time, high-quality data sources and other solutions, and our own technology to do region-specific analysis that allows us to do this.

Leah: So when you say region-specific analysis, can we double-click on that? What does that really mean when it comes to a consumer coming in through the sales funnel and getting a quote? How does that help with our overall experience?

David: Yeah, so Steadily does this differently because we're looking at region-specific analysis such as wildfire risk, wind, and other perils, and we're able to do that in real time to avoid any back and forth with underwriters — to make sure that we know all that up front. That's what's allowing us to give that quote immediately, with us understanding and believing in the quote that we're providing them. So it helps us identify risk more immediately in real time without having to do more manual back and forth, which gives the overall consumer a faster experience.

Leah: So David, how would you say that Steadily ensures a fast and user-friendly experience for its clients?

David: Steadily has a focus on providing the best user experience for the customer, and that's both by helping educate them as they're going through this process and leveraging that data to ensure that we can show them an immediate quote and give them a price that we can stand behind.

Leah: The education element is so important, especially for a lot of new landlords who may not know the differences between landlord insurance versus traditional homeowners insurance. There's a lot of nuances there, so the ability for us to really lead them throughout that process, even online, is definitely a value add for landlord audiences.

You've talked a lot about the ability to provide that instant feedback for clients — what if they still want to talk to an agent and have additional questions and need some of that further education?

David: So Steadily provides as much education as we can upfront through the process, letting them self-serve if they want to. We also ensure that there's a seamless handoff to our agent team as well, so when they reach out to the customer to provide them guidance — either through live chat, through text messaging, or through a phone call if they prefer — we can keep that speed and ease of use with Steadily so that they're immediately having these conversations and not waiting days in order to get feedback on the quote that they're looking to bind.

Leah: I love that. There's so much benefit in meeting a user where they are and where they're interacting, whether it's email, SMS, or phone. Being accessible for self-serve is a really good competitive advantage, especially when it comes to speed of service.

We've discussed some of the tech benefits for the client experience, but Steadily also works with a large number of licensed external independent insurance agents. I'm curious how our client experience complements or differs from what we offer to these external agents.

David: Steadily regularly hears from agents that our platform is blazing fast and extremely easy to use, and we continue to augment that with the tech we're talking about — providing them aerial imagery, providing them guidance on concerns we might have with the property, or just automatically giving them coverages when we are detecting things on the property. So the same fast, easy-to-use experience that we have for customers, our agents are benefiting from that tech as well, and being able to immediately get a quote that they can provide to their customers.

Leah: That's fantastic. When you think about the benefit for the licensed external insurance agent, that's such a better client experience that they can then pass forward from Steadily through to their end client.

It sounds like the combination of data sources, aerial imaging, and the user-friendly platform really help set Steadily apart. Curious how all these different elements work together to really enhance this client experience.

David: Steadily focuses on giving that customer the education, helping the agents when they need it as well, using third-party data sources to really augment our data, and also having our own sources of data that we can do further analysis on — so that quotes can happen in five minutes. We've seen customers binding themselves in 20 minutes, giving them that very immediate experience so they can get what they want done now and not have to wait weeks in order to finish this process.

Leah: So David, we've spoken a lot about how this data and the way that we're using it effectively provides an easy, fast, frictionless customer experience. I'm curious — in terms of other benefits to our clients, would this also translate into price savings or additional benefits that they would see with their bound policy through Steadily?

David: Yes, so Steadily can use these data sources to be much more specific with how we're rating each individual property. Traditional insurance carriers will divide a state up into larger regions but still ignore this more granular level. So we use various technologies such as the H3 specification to get down to a very small region of a quarter square mile or less, in order to decide that a house that borders a forest is going to be a high wildfire risk — but if you're a couple of streets over, even one street over, that is a low wildfire risk. And we can rate, price, and underwrite appropriately based on that information.

Leah: That feels like a huge differentiator in this space. Where these legacy rating models, like you said, they're not necessarily looking at the individual risk profile of the property — the ability for us to use this data and really hone in on that to have a more tailored, personalized price sounds very differentiated.

David: Yes, it allows us to offer lower prices and for us to have a lot more confidence in the properties that we're writing.

Leah: Well, thanks for breaking this all down — it's been super insightful and really helps provide some context about how Steadily is changing the insurtech space. Really appreciate you sharing all these insights with us today.

David: Of course, it was great to be here and discuss what we're doing with technology in order to make this process more seamless, both on the customer side and on our agent side. To our audience, if you like this video and find it helpful, please don't forget to subscribe for more tips on how to protect your rental investments with Steadily landlord insurance. We'll see you next time.