It does look like a site where one would book travel and they make a commission 
from the policy that is sold. All information is aggregated by location and a consumer can shop from there, but maybe this is more like “Cheap Flights” <grin>.
Below is an image that shows a Co-Pay Saver from United and it has pop up windows that describe whether or not you are getting first class or coach.
The name is correct as this seems like a bit of a zoo just like shopping anywhere for insurance. They license the technology out to health insurers as well. You know not too long ago I sad Ebay would be the place for insurance exchanges but perhaps they have a better search agent going here, but no word on if you can use PayPal.
eBay and PayPal Expanding Mobile Technology Opening Up Platform to Allow 3rd Party Developers–Could it Handle Insurance Exchanges & Save a Ton of Money?
If this doesn’t work here you might be venturing to Walgreens soon as it has been mentioned they could be considering selling insurance too, but hey they might just put a kiosk in the store and collect the commission from InsureMonkey, ok you heard that speculation here first.
Walgreens Selling Health Insurance? The Question Still Rambles On and Which One Would They Sell First? United? Both Already Have a Number of Joint Collaborations
The government has a page too that helps folks search for insurance and the company does not do any ratings yet but outsources that part of the business to another company. BD
InsureMonkey allows consumers to compare insurance providers online to find the best rates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCeGP_4obyw
Thank you for these kinds of a good blog. Where else could 1 get this kind of facts written in such an incite full way? I have a presentation that I am just now working on, and I have been trying to find this sort of information.
ReplyDeleteBarbara,
ReplyDeleteI know quite a bit about Insure Monkey and their business model and they do a lot of really good things for those looking for insurance and those that have gotten their insurance through them. Plus, they have even more going behind the scenes. They're far from a zoo and have a lot of really good things going for them. You might want to dig a little deeper.
Oh come on John, this is just another set of algorithms, aggregation and SQL statements and no doubt there will be more of these pop up as Orbitz doesn't have a lock on the travel business. I say such as having written enough SQL statements and years back integrated a billing software in the the EMR I wrote. You get it all when you do it first hand.
ReplyDeleteAgain as mentioned, EBay has a nice platform too that can do the same and again it's using a predictive algorithm ie. Netflix, which guesses what you may like which is around 60% accurate.
The big issue today is accuracy and flawed data and it's all over the place and data mining is wreaking havoc all over with some states even putting governors on their public servers to keep the data miners out as servers slow down to a crawl.
It's all about the query, accuracy, data mined, aggregation today in pretty much everything we see out there.
The name could use some improvement in my opinion as far as branding and selling some integrity to consumers. I watched the video I posted and see where their commissions are the same as any agent selling insurance and that is not good news for agent who sell insurance as their compensation has been falling consistently with what they are paid.
When it comes to flawed data though, you might want to give this a read as there's lot of examples and items to be aware of when we start using machine learning technologies a bit more as we are writing the unreadable in some area, just an awareness we should all think about.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2012/01/president-appoints-richard-cordray-as.html?utm_source=BP_recent
Every website out there is just a bunch of SQL statements. It's how you put them together and the service that you provide that differentiates a company.
ReplyDeleteZappos wasn't the only company selling shoes online either and they did well with a nice billion dollar exit. I'm not saying Insure Monkey is that big, but my point is just cause their is competition doesn't mean there isn't a model. In fact, most investors won't invest if there aren't competitors.
I don't know where the rant about flawed data comes from. Of course if there data is flawed there in trouble. That's why their business has to produce quality data.
The biggest challenge for this company is that insurance isn't "sexy." So, it's a hard business to get funding so you can scale.
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I’ve really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. After all I will be subscribing to your rss feed and I hope you write again soon.
ReplyDelete