Givesurance, a startup that helps users donate a cut of their insurance premiums to charity, is launching out of beta today.
Users provide Givesurance with the name of their insurance company, policy number, state, and expiration date. Givesurance then returns up to 5 percent of all monthly insurance payments in the form of a donation credit, which users can donate to the charity of their choice.
Givesurance founder Jennifer Rasiah, who has worked in the insurance industry since she was eighteen, says that insurance companies spend about 10% of their revenue on advertising, which adds up to more than $1 billion per year.
“I always worked with some form of charity, and it dawned on me that charities have thousands and thousands of supporters, so they could be a way better go-to-market strategy for the insurance company than advertising,” says Rasiah. “But I also knew that no insurance company was going to build that.”
So Rasiah started her own brokerage. When consumers sign up, they’re effectively replacing their old broker with Givesurance, which donates around 30% of its total commission back to its users in the form of donation credits.
Rasiah says that this is financially possible because they don’t have to pay for advertising. The traditional insurance broker, she says, spends around 50% of commission on acquiring and retaining customers. Instead, Givesurance has partnered with 35 charitable organizations, including Habitat For Humanity SF, Books For Africa, and Big Cat Rescue, that promote Givesurance to their millions of followers free of charge.
Givesurance is currently working with over 200 insurance companies, including Progressive, Travelers, and Healthco. If your insurance company is not on the platform, Givesurance will show you a list of similar plans offered by their partners at the same price point.
The potential impact here is huge. American households spend $2.1 trillion on their insurance premiums each year, Rasiah tells me, and 113 million people in the U.S. already donate to at least one non-profit.
“If all of these donors received a 5% back as a donation credit, that’s an extra $100 billion that could go to charities per year, just from Givesurance,” Rasiah says.
Givesurance graduated from 500 Startups in October of last year, and has raised seed funding from 500, Kima Ventures, and a handful of angels including Houston Rocket owner Leslie Alexander.