Episode 49: On Digital Car Insurance with Adam Fischer, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Clearcover

In this week’s episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we speak with Adam Fischer, chief product and innovation officer of Clearcover. 

Clearcover is a digital car insurance provider offering quality coverage for less.

In the episode, we learn about Clearcover and how its subscriptions work, as well as what makes Clearcover stand out from its competitors and the hiring process in the company.

Keep reading to learn more.

Clearcover

Clearcover has been live as a digital auto insurer for the last three years. The brand started in California and currently operates in 19 states.

The company aims to provide customers with an excellent experience with their auto insurance. The brand also helps customers save money on their insurance using the digital-first approach.

Through Clearcover’s mobile app, the company services customers and handles claims. 

Adam Fischer

The episode begins with Adam explaining how Clearcover works and more about his role at the company. 

Adam is the chief product and innovation officer for Clearcover. He’s responsible for all of the digital products the company builds and brings to its customers.

Clearcover acquires all its customers through an eCommerce funnel.

Adam explains that the core of the insurance company is the policy administration system. Adam manages the technical product managers who are responsible for the roadmap and building of a quality core insurance system. This allows the company to build great services for Clearcover’s customers.

Additionally, Adam is responsible for the product design. This includes all the UX design, UX research, and more.

Before working at Clearcover, Adam worked at apartments.com in the product management department. And before that, he worked at Redbox during its heyday when it was a $2 million entertainment company.

Adam explains that customers have a certain level of expectation of what their digital experience should be like with an insurer. He says there are so many insurers out there who aren’t providing a high-quality service. Instead, they’re offering a sub-standard experience and aren’t considering tech or digital first.

Adam shares that Clearcover is a fascinating place to work as a product professional. This is mainly because there’s such a diversity of customer problems to solve. Not only do you need to have excellent selling experience, but you need to know in depth how to sell a complex product like auto insurance.

You also need to have mobile apps and servicing experience. Following on from that, you need to be able to build a powerful and helpful claims experience. 

Adam explains that the claims experience is interesting to build as you’re likely dealing with customers experiencing a tough time.

Growing Clearcover

Adam shares how the brand hopes to go nationwide. However, some states make it more challenging to work in than others. To operate in some states, an insurance company must have a certain amount of experience for a specific amount of time.

Because of those requirements, it may take a while before Clearcover can operate in certain states.

Despite this, Adam explains that Clearcover’s goal is to eventually operate nationwide, covering most states.

Adam also talks about expanding the brand beyond autos. He says that while the team is keeping its options open, autos are the company's focus. He says you never know where the company will go and what will make the most sense for Clearcover’s customers in the future.

What Makes Clearcover Special

What differentiates Clearcover from its competition is also discussed by Adam in detail. 

Adam explains that Clearcover considers what the customer wants. And from Clearcover’s perspective, customers want transparency, convenience, low prices, and superior value.

Clearcover believes if it brings these qualities to the customer, it’s going to win.

Adam explains that some competitors know they need to have digital experience and must build technology for their company, but they’re not particularly interested in the experience. With some competitors, you can tell this immediately when you open an app. Sometimes even the way the navigation is built shows that technology is not the company’s strong point.

Clearcover, on the other hand, puts in the time and effort to ensure that the user experience on the app is streamlined and efficient. When Clearcover builds technology, the company starts with the customer first to ensure the user journey is of high quality.

Adam claims that their customers recognize this, too. One of the ways the Clearcover team measures its success is through its customer effort score. Adam is proud that the team’s customer effort score is very high.

Next, Adam goes on to discuss the payments and billing side of the company. 

Adam also talks about the hiring process and how it’s changing in today’s world. He gives advice for those hiring in technology, including information on taking risks when employing new staff members.

Clearcover and Covid-19

We learn how Covid-19 affected how the team at Clearcover worked during the pandemic.

Adam explains that Covid-19 was scary for everyone at Clearcover. When the pandemic started, the team was approximately 10 to 15 percent remote, so there was already a remote culture there initially. Clearcover’s CEO, Kyle Nakatsuji, has always said that the company hires adults, so that’s how employees are treated. Many employees worked predominantly in the office before the pandemic hit, with limited time working at home.

With the spread of Covid-19, it didn’t cause too much of a shift in how the team at Clearcover worked. While it wasn’t all smooth sailing, the team managed to make it work.

Adam learned as a leader that everyone has unique living and family situations, and these had a significant impact on how they could deal with the pandemic. 

For some parents, it was great. For others, it was highly stressful.

Other people had to deal with feelings of isolation and overwork because their usual social outlets were gone.

For Clearcover, it was important to stay in constant communication with its team members, ensure people felt supported, and make sure that staff realized the company was flexible with things like taking time off. 

Clearcover also allowed staff members to use their Zoom accounts personally to connect with family or friends. There was even an employee who recorded a wedding for a friend using their Zoom account.

Overall, from an operational point of view, running the team remotely during Covid-19 was quite easy.

Toward the end of the episode, Adam talks more about the services Clearcover offers and how he expects the product to develop in the future.

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