What changed in this filing

/stocks — the workspaceLOADING

Item 1. Business

2022-02-25 compared with 2021-03-01 · 55 added, 41 removed, 191 unchanged (33% of the section changed)

4 unchanged sentences

Our vision is to become the largest online source of insurance policies by using data and technology to make insurance simpler, more affordable and personalized, ultimately reducing cost and

Our results-driven marketplace, powered by our proprietary data and technology platform, is reshaping the insurance shopping experience for consumers and improving the way insurance providers, which we view as including both carriers and agents, attract and connect with customers shopping for insurance.

Our results-driven marketplace, powered by our proprietary data and technology platform, is reshaping the insurance shopping experience for consumers and improving the way insurance providers attract and connect with consumers shopping for insurance.

Finding the right insurance product is often challenging for consumers, who face limited online options, complex, variable and opaque pricing, and myriad coverage configurations.

1 unchanged sentence

Our marketplace reduces the time consumers spend searching across multiple sites by delivering broader and more relevant results than consumers may find on their own.

Our service is free for consumers, and we derive our revenue from sales of consumer referrals to insurance providers and, in select verticals, directly from commissions on the sale of policies.

In consumer surveys we have conducted, consumers purchasing auto insurance policies from referrals made through our marketplace reported average annual premium savings of approximately $600.

Insurance providers operate in a highly competitive and regulated industry and typically specialize on pre-determined

Our direct to consumer, or DTC, agents bind policies for consumers, further streamlining the consumer shopping experience.

Our service is free for consumers, and we derive our revenue from sales of consumer referrals to insurance providers and directly from commissions on sales of policies.

Insurance providers, which we view as including carriers, our own DTC agents, and third-party agents, operate in a highly competitive and regulated industry and typically specialize on pre-determined

subsets of consumers.

3 unchanged sentences

consumer referrals that match the insurers’ specific requirements.

The transparency of our marketplace, as well as the campaign management tools we offer, make it easy for insurance providers to evaluate the performance of their marketing spend on our platform and manage their own return on investment.

Based on insurance provider feedback, we believe we are a large and efficient consumer acquisition and retention channel for our insurance provider customers.

The transparency of our marketplace, as well as the campaign management tools we offer, make it easy for insurance carriers and third-party agents to evaluate the performance of their marketing spend on our platform and manage their own return on investment.

Industry Overview

2 unchanged sentences

insurance carriers spent $154 billion in 2020 on marketing and distribution consisting of $137 billion in commissions to agents and $16.7 billion in advertising, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence;

SNL Insurance Data, a study we commissioned by Stax Inc and our own estimates.

SNL Insurance Data, a study we commissioned by Stax Inc.

and our own estimates.

Based on these same sources, online insurance advertising spend of North American insurance carriers and agents was $6.5 billion in 2020 and is estimated to grow more than 16% annually through 2024.

10 unchanged sentences

shopping experiences, products and services.

Our results-driven marketplace, powered by our proprietary data and technology platform, matches and connects consumers seeking to purchase insurance with relevant options from our network of insurance providers, saving consumers and providers time and money.

Proprietary, data-driven technology platform.

Our platform efficiently attracts consumers shopping for insurance to our websites and call center, which match them to relevant providers for streamlined quoting.

This enables us to maintain high levels of quality control and provide real-time referrals to our insurance provider customers at the moment of the consumer’s purchase intent.

This enables us to maintain high levels of quality control and provide real-time referrals to insurance providers at the moment of the consumer’s purchase intent.

Consumer engagement and benefits.

1 unchanged sentence

websites that make shopping for insurance easy, cost-effective and more personal.

We also connect with consumers who have completed a quote request with one of our verified partners.

We aim to make the end-to-end

shopping experience seamless by enabling consumers to securely share their data with matched providers, accelerating quoting and reducing repetition in the shopping process.

We also engage consumers offline through non-company

branded television campaigns and consumer calls placed directly to a call center partner or insurance agent and through our verified partner network.

Additionally, we engage with consumers offline through non-company

branded television campaigns and consumer calls placed directly to a call center operated by us, by one of our verified partners, or by an insurance agent.

We offer consumers a streamlined and personalized insurance buying experience, providing the following key benefits:

8 unchanged sentences

Our tools are designed to integrate with insurance providers’ internal workflows to minimize administrative burden, and can incorporate quote, bind and lifetime value feedback, enabling providers to evaluate and optimize their acquisition and retention campaigns through a single interface.

Based on insurance provider feedback, we believe we are a large and efficient consumer acquisition and retention channel for our insurance provider customers.

We offer insurance providers the following key benefits:

4 unchanged sentences

A flexible advertising channel

We derive our revenue from sales of consumer referrals to third-party insurance providers and directly from commissions on sales of policies by our DTC agents.

Our Strengths

9 unchanged sentences

As we attract more consumers to our platform, we collect more data to improve user experience, which in turn improves conversion rates, which we believe will improve consumer satisfaction.

Over time, the combination of these factors has increased consumer traffic, leading to more quote requests for our insurance provider customers.

Increased quote requests, combined with quote and bind feedback, improve providers’ advertising and marketing efficiency in our marketplace, resulting in more providers and provider spend.

Over time, the combination of these factors has increased consumer traffic, leading to more quote requests for our insurance providers.

Increased quote requests, combined with quote and bind feedback, improve our third-party insurance providers’ advertising and marketing efficiency in our marketplace, resulting in more providers and provider spend.

More providers and provider spend enable us to attract more consumers, generating more data.

Through these characteristics of our platform, we increased the volume of quote requests referred to our insurance provider customers from 2 million in 2014 to 27 million in 2020.

Flexible business model.

5 unchanged sentences

Breadth and scale of our distribution.

Over the past decade, we have cultivated relationships with a broad range of insurance provider partners and currently have over 100 carriers participating in our marketplace either directly or via our network of over 8,500 agents.

We believe that the breadth of our coverage provides a significant benefit to our consumers and is a key competitive advantage, particularly in our largest vertical of auto insurance where significantly all of the top carriers participate in our marketplace.

Agent workforce.

Through our acquisitions of Crosspointe Insurance & Financial Services, LLC, or Crosspointe, which we later renamed Eversurance, and Policy Fuel, LLC and its affiliated entities, or PolicyFuel, we significantly expanded the number of DTC agents on our platform.

These agents allow us to directly offer insurance products to consumers, more efficiently serve insurance shoppers with a personalized experience and contribute to our data insight.

Ability to expand with significant operating leverage.

2 unchanged sentences

Diversified business model.

Our marketplace operates in several insurance markets including auto, home, renters, life, health and commercial, which provides an opportunity to diversify our revenue base and expand our potential growth opportunities.

Our marketplace operates in several insurance markets including auto, home and renters, life and health, which provides an opportunity to diversify our revenue base and expand our potential growth opportunities.

Additionally, by operating in several verticals we can lessen our exposure to negative impacts in any one of these markets.

Recently, through the expansion of our DTC agency offerings, we are now able to generate revenue from carrier commissions, primarily from the sales of health and auto policies.

Our Growth Strategies

1 unchanged sentence

Data-driven innovation is at the core of our strategy, culture and operating focus.

With our diverse team of analysts, engineers and business development employees, as well as our partnerships with leading insurance providers, we are working to build the largest and most trusted online insurance marketplace in the world.

With our diverse team of analysts, engineers and business development employees, as well as our partnerships with leading third-party insurance providers, and our own DTC agents, we are working to build the largest and most trusted online insurance marketplace in the world.

To achieve this goal, we intend to continue to grow our business by pursuing the following strategies:

13 unchanged sentences

Our goal is to provide broader and more meaningful consumer experiences, leading to increased return visits, and higher frequency of interaction, which we believe will result in greater revenue per user.

With our DTC agency offerings, we have expanded our opportunity to directly connect with insurance shoppers.

We believe that our DTC agency experience will enable us to deepen consumer-provider engagement by creating a more personalized and streamlined end-to-end

consumer shopping journey, with enhanced product selection and less friction from arrival to policy sale.

Enhance our brand awareness.

We believe we have significant opportunities to increase our brand awareness.

We believe we have significant long-term opportunities to increase our brand awareness.

Historically, our marketing efforts have been focused on algorithmic consumer acquisition rather than brand marketing.

2 unchanged sentences

We regularly evaluate new products and services that we believe will attract more consumers, and deepen our consumer and insurance provider engagement, which we believe will result in enhanced monetization.

For example, we recently launched our direct-to-consumer,

or DTC, agency offerings in our life vertical.

Additionally, in September 2020, we acquired Crosspointe Insurance & Financial Services, LLC, or Crosspointe, a specialized health insurance agency.

Crosspointe is a DTC sales and decision support contact center that connects consumers to high quality health insurance in a customer-centric environment and serves the individual and family health, Medicare, and ancillary health product markets.

This acquisition enables

us to accelerate and expand our opportunity in the health insurance market, by providing insurance shoppers with a broader range of health insurance products through access to a greater number of carrier partners, and an improved and more personalized customer buying experience.

We believe that our DTC agency experience will enable us to deepen consumer-provider engagement by creating a more personalized and streamlined end-to-end

consumer shopping journey, with enhanced product selection and less friction from arrival to policy sale.

In 2020, we launched our DTC agency offerings in our life vertical and, in our health insurance vertical through our acquisition of Eversurance, a specialized health insurance agency.

In 2021, we launched our DTC agency offering in our automotive vertical through our acquisition of PolicyFuel, a policy-sales-as-a-service

PolicyFuel provides services to enable carriers to complement their own call center operations with access to dedicated advisor teams that focus exclusively on selling that provider’s offerings.

By expanding the range of products we offer to carriers and expanding our DTC offerings into new markets, we have been able to generate additional revenue.

We also plan to continue to invest in the growth of our non-auto

8 unchanged sentences

Our websites, mobile applications and supporting services, as well as our development and test environments, are hosted across industry-standard cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

Additional internal data and analysis tools are hosted at a third-party data center in Boston, Massachusetts.

We use content delivery network solutions for fast, local access to our products.

5 unchanged sentences

Additionally, we have built an efficient, consultative sales and customer success organization, which sells our marketplace referrals to insurance carriers and agencies and engages directly with consumers to sell life and health insurance policies.

Our marketplace relies on consumer acquisition from our online and, to a lesser extent, our offline marketing efforts.

Our marketplace acquires consumers through both online and offline marketing efforts.

Our online marketing efforts include search engines, display advertising, social media, email and content-based online advertising.

Our online marketing also includes acquiring consumers that complete a quote request with one of our verified partners.

Offline marketing efforts include non-company

branded television campaigns and consumer calls placed directly to a call center operated by us, by one of our verified partners, or by an insurance agent.

Our consumer marketing strategies are algorithmic and performance-based, leveraging our team of analysts, data scientists and engineers, along with our data assets and technology.

3 unchanged sentences

Direct-to-consumer

Our DTC agency group is a data-driven, sales and decision support contact center that connects consumers to health and life insurance in a customer centric environment.

In September 2020, we acquired Crosspointe, a specialized health insurance agency, to accelerate growth in our health vertical and our own initiatives to offer DTC agency experiences.

Our DTC agency is a data-driven, sales and decision support contact center that assists consumers in reviewing and purchasing health and life insurance in a customer centric environment.

We also operate as a policy-sales-as-a-service

provider in our automotive vertical.

This enables carriers to complement their own call center operations with access to our DTC agents that focus exclusively on selling that provider’s offerings.

Carrier sales and marketing.

Our carrier marketing initiatives are designed to deliver high-value content on how carriers can increase efficiency in their customer acquisition efforts by capitalizing on the increasing targetability and personalization enabled by our marketplace.

We focus on building deep relationships and establishing thought leadership among carriers through our presence at industry tradeshows, targeted delivery of

whitepapers and other materials, and personal outreach to key decision makers and marketing teams.

We focus on building deep relationships and establishing thought leadership among carriers through our presence at industry tradeshows, targeted delivery of whitepapers and other materials, and personal outreach to key decision makers and marketing teams.

This team takes a data-driven approach to helping insurance carriers bind more policies with their target consumers at lower cost per sale than other channels.

3 unchanged sentences

Our agent marketing focuses on educating agents on how consumer buying behavior is changing and increasingly moving online and how they can better acquire and serve consumers in the digital world through participation in our marketplace.

We reach new agents online through email, search, social media, and content marketing and in person at tradeshows and conferences.

We reach new agents online through email, search, telephone calls, social media, and content marketing and in person at tradeshows and conferences.

For our current agent customers, we communicate the value of our platform and educate them on its use through our onboarding process, ongoing outreach and account performance reports.

4 unchanged sentences

Our insurance provider customers include:

Insurance carriers write auto, home and renters, life, commercial and/or health insurance policies for consumers either directly and/or through agents.

Insurance carriers write auto, home and renters, life, and/or health insurance policies for consumers either directly and/or through agents.

Our marketplace consists of an extensive network of national and regional carriers as well as technology enabled start-ups.

Our largest customer Progressive Casualty Insurance Company accounted for 22% and 21% of our revenue for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.

Our largest customer Progressive Casualty Insurance Company accounted for 16% of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021.

We plan to continue to grow both the number of carriers participating in our marketplace and the level of participation from each carrier.

Insurance agents deliver auto, home and renters, life, commercial and/or health insurance to consumers on behalf of one or more carriers.

As of December 31, 2020, we had over 8,500 enrolled insurance agencies on our platform.

We also receive commissions from our insurance carrier customers for policies sold by our own DTC agents.

Insurance agents deliver auto, home and renters, life, and/or health insurance to consumers on behalf of one or more carriers.

As of December 31, 2021, we had over 8,500 enrolled insurance agencies on our platform as well as our own DTC agents.

We are focused on further penetrating the large base of more than 100,000 insurance agencies in the United States.

13 unchanged sentences

Competition for insurance provider advertising and marketing spend.

We compete for insurance providers’ advertising and marketing spend with other internet sites, performance marketers and online

marketing service providers.

We compete for insurance providers’ advertising and marketing spend with other internet sites, performance marketers and online marketing service providers.

We also compete with offline media, such as television, radio and direct mail.

We believe we compete favorably on the basis of the scale and quality of our consumer referrals, our seamless handoff capability, our ability to align consumers with our providers’ preferences and business strategies and the targeting capabilities of our platform.

Employees and Human Capital Resources

Our company culture is data-driven, entrepreneurial, diverse and innovative.

We are focused on delivering superb results for our consumers, insurance providers and partners.

As of December 31, 2021, we had 674 employees, of which 671 were full-time.

Our human capital is integral to our future success.

For that reason, our human capital resources objectives include attracting, retaining, developing and motivating a diverse team of highly skilled employees at all levels.

We value our employees and provide them with competitive cash compensation as well as opportunities for equity ownership.

The principal purposes of our equity incentive plans are to attract, retain and motivate employees, consultants and directors through the granting of stock-based compensation awards in ways that encourage long-term retention and are aligned with the interests of our stockholders.

We value our employees and regularly benchmark total rewards we provide, such as short- and long-term compensation, 401(k) contributions, health, welfare and quality of life benefits, paid time off and personal leave, against our industry peers to ensure we remain competitive and attractive to potential new hires.

In addition, we regularly conduct employee surveys to gauge employee engagement and solicit feedback and enhance our understanding of the views of our employees, work environment and culture.

The results from engagement surveys are used to implement programs and processes designed to enhance employee engagement and improve the employee experience.

Our business operates in a heavily regulated industry.

34 unchanged sentences

Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business