Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. You can check out last quarter’s Austin round-up here.
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Nestor Solari was helping his aunt with her personal budget when he was taken aback at how much she was paying for car insurance.
“That was the start of my familiarity with how difficult it is for working-class immigrants to get access to auto insurance,” said Solari, the son of Uruguayan immigrants.
In 2019, he co-founded Sigo Seguros, which he said is the only insurance company in the U.S. that can digitally onboard Spanish-speaking customers. The mobile-first platform is designed to overcome some of the challenges immigrants may face, such as not having a credit score or a U.S. driver’s license.
Sigo Seguros launched last year in Texas, which remains its only market at the moment. The platform has already attracted thousands of customers and seven figures in premiums, Solari said.
We’re the first company that can understand Spanish speakers from click to sale to claim. Whereas today, there’s a kink in that funnel from brick-and-mortar agents to the carriers, so that data isn’t unified.”
Most brick-and-mortar insurance agencies consider credit score, education level and employment type as factors that insurance carriers use in their insurance underwriting, according to Solari. These factors generate higher premiums for immigrant customers like Solari’s father, who came to the U.S. with no driver’s license, no college education and no credit score.
“He was literally the safest guy I’ve ever met on the road,” Solari said. “He never wanted to get pulled over. He paid every bill. That’s the exact type of risk that we’d want to insure.”
Sigo Seguros still assesses risk, but it accounts for other factors, like age, gender, marital status, driver class and vehicle type.
“As we sort through it, we are largely looking for clean driving records,” Solari said. “Getting people that have a clean driver’s record that would otherwise not be able to get insurance online is particularly the [demographic] slice we’re really interested in.”
He said there is a “huge gap” of Spanish-speaking drivers that may have started the insurance-buying process online, but couldn’t complete the transaction with other companies because their website or app didn’t accommodate Spanish speakers. The Sigo Seguros platform is powered by a logic engine that helps automate the underwriting process, which Solari said eliminates some of the costs incurred by brick-and-mortar insurance agencies.
“Our customers, on average, will save anywhere between $250 to $500 a year versus some of these other options where you need to pay a down payment or an initial broker fee,” he said.
Sigo Seguros’ technology also uses data to better understand its customers and develop a more sophisticated marketing strategy.
“We’re the first company that can understand Spanish speakers from click to sale to claim,” Solari said. “Whereas today, there’s a kink in that funnel from brick-and-mortar agents to the carriers, so that data isn’t unified.”
The 30-person company has raised $6.9 million in seed funding, including a $5.4 million round in February. Sigo Seguros plans to expand to another market in the first half of next year.
Solari said he hopes to continue offering auto insurance to several more states and eventually branch out into other forms of insurance.
