Lemonade (LMND +0.88%) has made a big splash in the insurance market. Promising "Instant everything. Incredible prices. Big heart," it is winning young customers left and right. Until recently, it's only offered renters, homeowners, and pet insurance, but now it's announced it's offering life insurance, too. On a Fool Live episode recorded on April 14, Fool contributors Brian Withers, Brian Feroldi, and Brian Stoffel discuss this move and what it means for the company.
Brian Withers: [Viewer named] Dollars and cents is poking on Lemonade a little bit and I want to get to it because it got five upvotes. "My concern with Lemonade is with the thesis that they will be able to translate their property and casualty sales to life insurance sales. I don't see it scaling on the life side."
They admitted when they got into life insurance that this is a trial balloon. This is one of those things where Amazon tries the Fire phone and if it hits, great. If it doesn't, we learned something from it. I think they can make some in-roads with life insurance. I think one of the biggest complaints that I've seen about Lemonade is I can't group all my things together. I can't do my auto insurance, and my life insurance, and all of my insurances together, so I have multiple insurance providers.
I think what's happening is they're winning on price and convenience with the younger crowd. That is trumping the umbrella policy stuff and I think eventually will allow them to expand and get into more insurance businesses over time.
Brian Feroldi: I love the optionality. They are clearly an optionality company. I would say, don't overlook the pet insurance market. That's no joke. Trupanion has been a phenomenal company to invest in. Like I said, $3 billion company.
Brian Stoffel: Yes, but that would be an example of getting in early on a company that you gave the example of before. I mean, that's a company that people have known about for a long time back when it was $500 million. It's a six-bagger since then.
