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Kin delivers a fast experience to quote and buy home insurance. But what does that mean for you, the customer?
The company recently raised a $47 million round of venture funding to offer a new home insurance product. Their quoting process is a huge improvement over industry giants like State Farm, which can require 126 questions for their home insurance application. So how does Kin make it so easy?
Here’s everything you need to know about Kin insurance:
- How does Kin calculate insurance quotes?
- What’s protected with Kin insurance?
- Kin details and reviews
- Filing a claim with Kin
How does Kin calculate insurance quotes?
Kin pulls data from satellite imagery, MLS data feeds, and other third party providers. Kin is similar to Swyfft when it comes to using data to accelerate the quoting process. With just your address, Kin gives you a full policy quote on your home. Keep in mind, this quote is only indicative, and some users have reported it changing throughout the application. You won’t know the final premium for sure until you click through and buy the policy. That being said, Kin is pretty competitive on price, so let’s look at what you are buying if you buy a Kin policy.
What’s protected with Kin insurance?
The good news is Kin uses the same ISO standard home insurance form used by most of the industry. So you can compare their home insurance coverage to others on an apples-to-apples basis.
One item to look for with Kin is the hurricane deductible or wind/hail deductible. As Kin mostly sells in high-risk hurricane states, they quote with a high hurricane deductible. If Kin quotes you a home policy with a 5%/10% hurricane deductible, this means if a hurricane causes damage to your home, your deductible will jump to a percentage of your total dwelling coverage.
A $35,000 deductible is crazy high, so try to avoid the 5%/10% hurricane deductibles if you can. While Kin does have some of the best prices in many areas they sell, make sure you are not just sacrificing coverage for the price.
Kin details and reviews
Kin is not technically an insurance carrier. They’re what is called an MGA (managing general agency). An MGA controls the branding, pricing, and claims experience of the policy, but someone else puts up the capital needed to cover the catastrophic risk exposure of the insurance. Kin uses reinsurance relationships to back these catastrophic risks.
Filing a claim with Kin
So here’s the tricky part, and not just for Kin but for all new MGA entrants. How is the new claims experience? Claims are always a sticky subject, for both new and old carriers. You could say larger carriers like State Farm have more experience in claims, so when it comes time to file a claim, they will be more equipped to help. Of course, you will pay for this in higher premiums and funding their expensive ad budgets (in 2016, GEICO spent $1.35B on ads, State Farm spent $629M).
