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cover art for Haven Life with Yaron Ben-Zvi (CEO) | E102

Fintech Impact

Haven Life with Yaron Ben-Zvi (CEO) | E102

Ep. 102
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In this 102nd episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Yaron Ben-Zvi, founder of Haven Life, to talk about how he ended up in the life insurance industry, the problems he found once he got there, and how Haven Life aims to fix those problems.


Episode Highlights:

  • 00:36: – Haven Life is a service that rethinks how people purchase life insurance policies using better tech.
  • 01:24: – Yaron started Haven Life because he was shocked at how outdated the process was when he went to purchase his first life policy after the birth of his first child.
  • 04:25: – Every step of purchasing life insurance had tons of friction that Yaron believed could be alleviated using technology, from understanding the product to applying to underwriting and the customer decision.
  • 05:25: – Jason notes that Yaron includes policy examples in the application process to remove the intimidation factor.
  • 06:54: – The best insights while developing the Haven Life website came from in-person conversations with users, not A/B testing.
  • 07:18: – People mainly wanted to see what kinds of policies other people were buying and how much they were paying.
  • 10:20: – Haven Life is backed and wholly owned by MassMutual. Each Haven Term policy is issued by their parent company. 
  • 11:00: – When a customer submits an application, the Haven Life software reviews application and third party data in real-time to determine eligibility immediately.
  • 11:57: – Yaron started the company as an online, intermediary insurance broker, but quickly decided he wanted to partner with an underwriter, and that’s what led to MassMutual.
  • 13:58: – Haven Life is built for a younger, previously unapproached customer for life insurance.
  • 14:53: – The hardest part of underwriting is gathering medical information from doctors.
  • 16:42: – Haven Life removes the communications barrier of the customer not knowing the status of their policy.
  • 18:43: – Everything on Haven Life is managed online. You can access your policy information and manage it in a customer portal online.
  • 20:27: – If Yaron could change one thing about the life insurance industry, it would be to create a better way to get products into the hands of underserved customers.
  • 21:09: – The customers who need life insurance most are often the ones for whom it would cost the most and for whom it would be most difficult to afford.
  • 21:50: – Yaron’s biggest challenge has been the specific complexities of the industry since he entered it as an outsider.
  • 23:08: – What excites Yaron the most is that he truly believes he is making a difference in people’s lives and that he still has so much work to do to make the product better.


3 Key Points

  1. Haven Life is trying to remove the traditional friction and pain points in buying a life insurance policy.
  2. Partnering with MassMutual allowed Yaron to rethink the entire life cycle of an insurance policy to be digital from the ground up.
  3. The life insurance industry is not set up to make the product accessible to underserved populations.

 

Tweetable Quotes:

  • “It’s a tough thing to wrap your head around. We’re talking to them about the two things we’re wired to want to talk about least—your mortality and your finances.” –Yaron Ben-Zvi
  • “How do we redesign the life insurance process, how do we think about the underwriting process in a way that is completely digital from the ground up? It kind of let us rethink the entire life cycle of the process in a way that you couldn’t if you were just an outside intermediary.” –Yaron Ben-Zvi

 

Resources Mentioned:

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