Simplisure, a startup launched by life insurance industry veterans, has unveiled its flagship digital platform.
Two of the firm’s three principals have long worked with end clients and financial advisors in helping them find the best match based on the personal history and needs of those seeking insurance.
During those years, the two brothers Bracknell “Brack” and Caleb Baker said they realized a digital solution was overdue, one that would allow financial planners to simplify the life insurance process for their clients.
“We kept thinking to ourselves that there’s got to be ways to make this a cleaner, more efficient process,” said co-founder Brack Baker.
For many years, licensed insurance brokers and advisors have often focused on high-commission whole life insurance products.
“The area of insurance that is too often overlooked is simple, term life insurance,” said Sean Kenmore, the founder and principal of Affinity Capital Advisors, a nine-person fee-only fiduciary RIA based in Berkeley, Calif. “Let’s say you have a young family and you are in tech; maybe a $1 million fixed-term life insurance policy is the right choice for you, but that is a lot of work and process for not much of a payout.”
Many insurance brokers and advisors have a reputation for selling more complex and expensive whole life insurance policies, he said.
“We started with term life insurance because we saw there was a huge need by the advisors we worked with for education, unbiased price comparison, and a streamlined process that kept both the advisor and their client informed during underwriting,” said co-founder Caleb Baker.
“Term has a lower compensation, and that is just the way it is,” said Brack Baker.
Their Simplisure platform is fully digital and cloud-based and lets advisors and consumers easily search and compare prices and, ultimately, complete an application for term life insurance securely online.
It is meant for advisors who are not licensed to sell insurance but who nonetheless want to steer clients toward a carrier-agnostic quote comparison tool for term life insurance and who want to be kept in the loop during and after the process.
The platform provides two interfaces, one for advisors and a direct-to-consumer option.
Both interfaces enable users to search for and compare prices on term life insurance from 11 major carriers (the company plans to add others) and quickly fill out an application.
Simplisure acts as the insurance broker for all policies sold to the client.
Kenmore said while he had maintained an insurance license for several years, he let it lapse because he preferred to work with the Bakers. He had been one of the earliest users of Simplisure’s quote engine, which was the first part of the platform rolled out in 2022.
“The [Simplisure] platform is carrier, brand-agnostic, and if the quotes and pricing it comes back with look good, it is easy and fully automated and efficient when it comes to the application process,” said Kenmore.
“That is a big improvement over the past, the back-and-forth emails and phone calls, ‘did you get that quote for me?’” he said, referring to working with insurance brokers and carriers in the past to get quotes, which could often take days to weeks.
“I can now get a quote for my client in less than five minutes,” said Kenmore, who pays nothing to use the platform. It is free for non-licensed advisors to use; Simplisure makes its revenue acting as the insurance broker transacting the sale.
Simplisure grew out of GB Financial Group, a family life insurance firm co-founded in 1994 by Brack Baker and his mother, Gwen Baker.
The company has plans to expand into supporting comparisons and sale of long-term care and disability insurance in the future, according to the founders. There are also plans for Simplisure to roll out a subscription model for licensed advisors who want to use the company’s comparison engine in the next three to six months.
“That’s our goal, and we already do have some licensed advisors and P&C agents that engage with us on a commission-share basis,” said Brack Baker.
We have seen other examples of insurtech startups intersecting with the advisory business in recent years. Modern Life, which overlaps with much of what Simplisure does but for licensed advisors, launched its platform two years ago.
Both Ethos Life Insurance and Ladder Life Services also sell life insurance from multiple carriers, work with advisors (in addition to their direct-to-consumer products) and offer digital platforms. Ladder also has integrations with some advisor technology providers, including Orion’s Redtail and Envestnet | MoneyGuidePro.
