Over the past three years, the digital-only insurance market has surged on mobile, increasing app downloads by 461% and monthly active users (MAU) by a whopping 668%. What are digital-only insurance providers? They’re simply insurance companies who exist exclusively via app or online. Examples include Lemonade, Root, or Cover. The data in this report is derived from the top 10 most downloaded digital-only insurance apps.
Of the top digital-only insurance apps, approximately 60% specialize in car and travel, 30% in home and personal property and 10% in health insurance. The most prominent player, Root, falls under the car & travel category, but has been expanding its services as it grows. Root launched in September 2015 and amassed about 4.9 million downloads in its lifetime. More than half of these came in the last year.
It’s unclear if Root, and the market as a whole, will see another surge in the coming years. Things have cooled down significantly this year, with the market’s downloads and MAU growing at just 7% and 9%, respectively.
Still, there’s hype around new players like Fabric, which have been featured in Forbes, USA Today, Parents and more. The hype doesn’t match the uptake though, at least not yet. Fabric launched November 11th (last month) and so far it’s been downloaded under 1400 times. So why the press attention? It is allegedly the first app to offer a will creation feature.
