It allows any website with traffic (ideal targets are banks and financial institutions) to sell life insurance on their website using our JavaScript web app. A BOFA user cannot currently buy life insurance on Bofa.com, but can by going into the bank. A bank could offer life insurance online via our white labeled modal and take their users from getting a quote to e signing the policy. We handle the entire process with the user on the BOFA website.
Ok - so you could approach this in a few different ways. Here are two:
One way is to try to sell big enterprise contracts to big banks. This is really hard for startups to do, unless you have a product you know they really want, have deep connections or experience selling to banks, and have all the compliance and security requirements in place.
Another way to try this is to sell to smaller sites. They're more likely to adopt quickly, but you'll need to make sure that you maintain quality, are generating enough traffic and conversions to be worthwhile after the rev share, and don't devolve into something that appears scammy.
Do you know who actually wants what you are building? How have you figured that out?
Agreed. Smaller websites and every insurance agent that we've talked to say that they would love to have this and asking weekly if it is ready. We have not asked any large websites but their motivation is that it is extremely profitable with little financial resources required to implement (although it's a major decision to partner with a third party). Smaller customers will be good beta customers and we are happy to start there. We'll have great developer docs, beautiful UX, and vet the sites that can use it for quality. What are your suggestions to help us grow/afford our engineering team?
Answering for @reiderrider, the bulk of life insurance is still sold face-to-face and purchased from an agent or agency local to the consumer.
Not only could big banks + financial institutions plug in our js to sell life insurance online (from quoting -> application -> signature & medical exam), but also smaller agents/agencies that do business locally could accept online apps. Currently, agents meet in person and/or have plenty of phone calls with a client to figure out what coverage they need and then they sell the policy.
With our product, agents can direct their clients to their website which will walk the consumer through the process.
The Stripe analogy makes sense because Stripe & PayPal make it so easy for companies to accept payments online via their HTML button/JS script, which is what we are trying to do here. They also (both cos) provide great dashboards to the consumer (an insurance agent/agency for us) to track their data (which is in the pipeline for us).
