Insurance Expert Q&A With Clearcover CEO Kyle Nakatsuji

Kyle Nakatsuji, CEO and founder of Clearcover, has devoted his career to technology and most recently has spent his time focusing on how insurance products could be more seamlessly integrated with other products, services or experiences that people naturally have more affinity for or engage with more frequently.

ValuePenguin had a chance to discuss Nakatsuji’s plans for Clearcover’s continued technology advances, increased distribution and the car insurance industry as a whole.

How does Clearcover differ from traditional auto insurance companies?

Given our age and size, we have the benefit of building a mobile-friendly and digitally native experience. You can do everything you need to do with your car insurance policy (make payments, file a claim, chat with a Customer Advocate, etc.) all through the Clearcover app. (That being said, you can also reach us by phone because we understand sometimes you just need to talk to a person.)

We strive to design and build efficient processes so our customers can enjoy quality, convenience and cost savings. For example, the majority of our claims are filed digitally — which enables the loss to automatically be entered into the system and flagged to the necessary parties. The result is that the customer is paid faster. Digital filing isn’t the norm at traditional auto insurance companies.

If you could only pick one thing, what do you want consumers to think about when they hear Clearcover? Why?

What I think is more powerful is what words our customers actually use to describe Clearcover. "Approachable," "feels like I’m family," "affordable," "great and simple experience" — these are descriptions straight from our customers. I’m grateful that the vision I had for what a car insurance company could be is coming true in the eyes of our customers.

To keep pace with other innovating companies, how do you see auto insurance and consumer behavior evolving in the future? What will Clearcover do to continue to be at the forefront of innovation?

Continuing to innovate is important to us, but what’s most important is delivering what customers want and need. We regularly do things like run user focus groups, analyze engagement and usage trends of our app, and gather feedback from our Customer Advocate teams. All of this information is used to strategize Clearcover’s product future and plan for how to keep providing an exceptional insurance experience. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what we think auto insurance will look like in the future — we just have to make sure we respond to what our customers want it to be.

What about the auto insurance industry still keeps you up at night?

While there’s a lot of change on the horizon, what keeps me up at night is thinking about the ways we can help millions of customers save money on their car insurance. Sometimes it feels crazy that so many people are, often unwittingly, missing out on better experiences and lower prices because they chose their insurance based on an advertisement and/or haven’t evaluated it in years. I stay up at night planning how we fix that.