Lemonade Sees Path to Profitability and Reaches 2 Million Customers

Digital insurance company Lemonade says its platform now has 2 million customers.

The company announced that milestone in a news release Wednesday (Nov. 8) as it reported its quarterly earnings, noting that the pace to reach its second million customers was 35% faster than the first million in 2020.

“Reaching 2 million customers around the world is an exciting milestone, and one we achieved much faster than our first million and with significant expansions, of both product and geography, along the way,” said Shai Wininger, Lemonade’s co-founder/co-CEO.

“We’ve doubled our customers while increasing our premium by 3.5x. This is indicative of the strong progression of the business in recent years, and outlines a clear path to profitability.”

In addition, Lemonade’s net operating loss, compared to gross earned premium, roughly halved during the same period.

The firm’s gross loss ratio was 83%, “continuing the favorable trend we were seeing in recent quarters, which was rudely interrupted in Q2 2023,” Lemonade said in its letter to shareholders.

The release noted that the path to 2 million customers coincided with its embrace of artificial intelligence (AI), something company officials have been touting for the last several quarters.

The company said in May it plans to integrate generative AI into its existing AI and machine learning platforms. It is a goal co-CEO Daniel Schreiber restated in August.

“Using generative AI, we plan to take our automation even further and alongside other major tech developments now going into our platform,” he said on the call. “I trust we will start to see efficiency gains in a year or so.”

He also noted that the company is “now able to deploy fully compliant generative AI capabilities at scale and in a very short period of time.”

Lemonade’s technological efforts come at a time when the insurance industry and consumers — younger ones especially — are somewhat at odds in terms of digital offerings.

“While the industry is working diligently to eliminate this gap, it was still evident in recent satisfaction data regarding the sector’s digital transformation,” PYMNTS wrote recently.

While young people showed a strong preference for digital options, with 32% of millennials buying car insurance online, many of their experiences were found lacking, with customers dealing with lengthening claims cycles and redundancies across channels.