Esurance Insurance Services, Inc. is an American insurance company. The company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Allstate, sells auto, home, motorcycle and renters insurance direct to consumers online and over the phone offering services to nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population in 43 states. Its primary competitors are other direct personal auto writers such as GEICO and Progressive. Esurance has 1.5 million items-in-force, and also serves as a shopping and comparison site for car insurance in the seven remaining states that it does not sell. Esurance has nearly 3,500 employees in 19 offices in North America.
History
The company was cofounded by Jean-Bernard Duler, Jeffrey Goodman, Huyen Bui, David Griffin, and Charles Wallace. Its first round of $5.5 million in venture funding was led by Trinity Ventures and Palo Alto Ventures in May 1999 with a second round of funding of $34 million in October 1999 led by Redpoint Ventures and Global Retail Ventures.
Esurance launched its website and started writing personal auto insurance in four states in December 1999, and was one of the early pioneers of online auto insurance. The company website was also one of the first to offer comparison quotes that allowed consumers to compare prices with other leading insurance companies.
In 2000 Esurance was acquired by Folksamerica Holding Company, Inc. (a subsidiary of White Mountains Insurance Group).
In 2004, Esurance was one of the first car insurance companies to offer discounts to same-sex partners. The company continues to support LGBT issues through a variety of corporate sponsorships and events, such as the Trevor Project. Esurance also partners with auto glass claims service provider HSG on a "Save a Windshield, Plant a Tree" program that pledges to plant a tree for every Esurance customer who chooses to have their windshield repaired instead of replaced.
In May, 2011, Allstate announced that it had reached a definitive agreement with White Mountains Insurance Group to purchase Esurance and Answer Financial for approximately $1 billion. Allstate's acquisition of Esurance was completed on October 7, 2011. The company's headquarters will remain in San Francisco, CA.
In November 2013, Esurance pioneered online homeowners insurance purchasing by offering their own product in Wisconsin. "Today, only 2 to 3 percent of U.S. homeowners insurance is purchased online," said Esurance President and CEO Gary Tolman in a press release. "Much like the way Esurance pioneered car insurance online, making it quick and easy to quote and buy, we'll change how consumers shop for and buy homeowners insurance." According to Steve Lekas, Esurance's director of Homeowner Product and Actuarial Management, a lack of consistency between carriers catering to a variety of customer needs made it impossible to define homeowners risk efficiently enough without an agent's help; however, "[c]onsumers are becoming more and more familiar and comfortable shopping and buying online, and it is becoming something that people expect," Lekas told PC360. "With these changes, the next step is for an insurance company, who really understands how to best help consumers shop and buy insurance online, to build that capability." The insurer chose to debut the program in Wisconsin because the state domiciles one of its underwriting companies, said Lenkas, since Esurance underwrites its own homeowners and auto insurance policies.
Gary Auto Insurance Video
Business analysis
In a business analysis looking at fundamentals throughout May 2015, Becky Yerak of the Chicago Tribune reported that growth in policies and premiums for the Esurance unit in the first of quarter (1Q) 2015 (9%) was less than half, year-on-year for that of 2014--the period over which home insurance and other product offerings (and its relevant market share) had grown, and its geographic footprint expanded -- and that the unit's growth rate was generally slowing, significantly. At the same time, Esurance advertising levels were noted, in terms of cost, as being "significantly above a long-term sustainable level relative to premiums," as a result of Allstate's aim to increase its market share among the consumer segment described as "self-serve." In terms of Ensurance fundamentals, year-on-year improvement in its "combined ratio" (CR) -- a measure, whose extent above the 100 mark implies claims payments in excess of premiums coming in -- was 116 in 1Q 2015, down from 124 in 2014, indicating a continued but diminished loss on the unit's underwriting; the overall CR for all of Allstate's insurance business, whose brick-and-mortar automobile insurance arm had raised rates on average by 3% in Illinois during this period, was 89 for 1Q 2015. Yerak went on to report that executives of Allstate remain fully upbeat and committed to the acquisition and its performance in an early May earnings call and in earnings statements, with Allstate's president for its emerging businesses, Don Civgin, noting that Allstate's management of Esurance was aimed at "lifetime value of the business," and Allstate CEO and board chairman Tom Wilson indicating that the business' profitability could be driven by diminishing advertising outlays (and shutting down growth), but that Allstate was "choosing not to do that because we want to grow in that [self-serve] segment." In the reports, also acknowledged were the facts that Esurance "advertising investments... are higher than justified by current premium levels" and that the Esurance unit had not yet turned a profit (since its 2011 purchase); while the unit was not profitable, certain corrections, such as "purposefully slowed growth [accomplished] by lowering advertising expenses and implementing pricing and underwriting actions" had been implemented--though, as Wilson explained, Allstate management anticipated that "lifetime returns on new customers" would nevertheless make earlier and continuing advertising and other growth-related expenses worthwhile.
Marketing
Esurance markets itself strongly through sports teams and sporting events, and casts itself as being more environmentally friendly than competitors. The company has sponsored a number of sporting events and teams, including the US Open tennis tournament, the Golden State Warriors, and the Pac-12 Conference. The company often cites documents being available online in early company advertising.
Esurance has partnered with sports teams for "Go Green" events by giving away reusable grocery bags. About 45% of the company's data is stored on outsourced servers in a LEED certified building.
Early Esurance commercials were animated featuring a pink-haired female spy named Erin Esurance, who posed as an auto-insurance agent. The goal was to juxtapose a widely disliked business, insurance, with a popular superhero archetype. In her first three years, the character was used in over 30 commercials. The character was also used on an episode of Who Wants to be a Superhero?. Esurance stopped prominently using the character in its advertising in June 2010 because the character was unpopular in surveys compared to the average for other corporate mascots such as Microsoft's Clippy, with the exception of her top score in the "sexiness" category. Despite the unpopularity, in an example of Rule 34, pornographic fan art of the character--"some with a remarkable degree of verisimilitude to the real thing", according to CBS News--appeared frequently in results for Internet searches of "Erin Esurance", also likely contributing to the decision. The company rebranded itself, unveiling a new national advertising campaign as well as a new company logo. The ads were set in a faux Esurance office and feature a cast of characters, known as Techies & Feelies.
In December 2011 Esurance announced a new integrated advertising campaign that positioned the company as "Insurance for the Modern World". John Krasinski narrates the commercials, which were directed by Omri Cohen and feature the Grammy Award winning song, "Jam Man," from Country Music Hall of Fame guitarist Chet Atkins. The campaign is the first collaboration between Esurance and ad agency Leo Burnett Worldwide. As of 2014, the campaign continues, specifically targeting users of an unnamed company that offers insurance quotes in fifteen minutes; various "out of touch" users of said company are featured in short mock interviews, with the upshot at the end noting that Esurance offers insurance in 7½ minutes, half the time as their competitor.
In February 2015, Esurance released their Super Bowl XLIX commercial, featuring Bryan Cranston parodying his Walter White character from Breaking Bad. In April 2015, Esurance and Major League Baseball today announced a new multi-year sponsorship in which Esurance will be the exclusive auto insurance partner for Major League Baseball.
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