Insurtech Platform Increases Transaction Volume by 45%
Insurtech Platform Embeds ACH API in 10 Days
For one pet insurance company, account-to-account payments through Dwolla are the go-to method to reimburse policyholders on its platform. To do this, pet parents receive a quote from the website for their dog or cat and, once approved, submit a claim and receive reimbursement via ACH directly to their bank account.
Before starting this company, the CEO and co-founder spent six years working in the traditional insurance space before facing an emergency where her dog suffered from a brain tumor. The experience helped her see a blatant inefficiency in the claim reimbursement process.
“I was filling out a PDF, faxing it back, and waiting between four and six weeks just to have a check mailed to me for a reimbursement,” the CEO says. “That blew my mind. I saw first-hand the potential for a great pet insurance product.”
Together, the co-founders have closed the gap between what pet owners expect from a pet insurance product and what was available in the market.
Quickly Integrating a Payments Solution
Before going live with Dwolla, policyholders on the platform were submitting invoices and receiving reimbursements manually from the CEO. The end of every week was spent manually processing invoices and initiating reimbursements.
“As claim volumes started to increase, we realized how painful this process really was. So we started scrambling to figure out an alternative.”
The company’s CEO started searching for payment providers and tapped into her network to ask mentors about various payment solutions. All of them came back with the same suggestion: bank transfers work best for reimbursements.
“I kept getting referred to work with my bank,” the CEO says. “But that never really made a ton of sense to me. It was expensive and slow, and not great for a high volume of transfers.”
The company needed a payment solution that could easily be integrated and was reasonably priced. Just 10 days after a kickoff call with Dwolla, they completed an integration and started offering automated reimbursements via ACH transactions.
Transaction volumes increased by 45% over the course of 12 months.
Receiving Reimbursements in 1-2 Days
Now, pet parents are able to get a quote from the insurance company by entering a few pieces of information about their dog or cat. To submit a claim, the company simply requests an image of the invoice. That data is extracted, classified by the type of procedure and calculated. One click of a button from the pet insurance team will initiate the reimbursement.
“That’s exactly what we wanted, one click and the customer can accept a payment,” the CEO says. “And today, the majority of our members opt for reimbursements via ACH.”
Once the transaction is initiated, policyholders receive a direct deposit in their bank account within one to two business days.
“Continuing to automate and scale, that’s a huge focus for us,” the CEO says. “Dwolla has been really flexible with us and that’s super helpful for growing companies.”
