Insurtech, Podcasts

Fabric’s Adam Erlebacher: ‘No one wakes up thinking about how to buy life insurance’

  • Buying life insurance via digital channels isn't just about getting a policy.
  • Firms like Fabric are using a collaborative planning process to nudge customers the right way.
close

Email a Friend

Fabric’s Adam Erlebacher: ‘No one wakes up thinking about how to buy life insurance’

Having a kid encourages a lot of families to start thinking differently about their finances. Sure, life insurance is a part of that discussion, but so is creating a will and getting your financial info secured in one place.

Adam Erlebacher is co-founder and CEO of Fabric which provides sort of this organic experience around getting a new family’s finances in order. Adam joins us on the podcast to talk about his own personal experience with life insurance and how that inspired what Fabric is building.

Adam was formerly COO at Simple, an early digital bank, and we discuss how that experience influences the way he looking at fintech and digital finance.

SubscribeApple Podcasts I SoundCloud I Spotify I Google Podcasts
The following excerpts were edited for clarity.

Fintech and entrepreneurial experience

I started my career at JP Morgan doing leveraged finance, so I do have some legacy banking experience. After that I worked in a number of startups. After business school, I got introduced to Josh and Shamir, the founders of Simple. I was really excited about the mission of that company which was to make banking worry-free.

That was about 2009 in the depths of the financial crisis. There was an opportunity to reinvent personal banking with a modern experience. I think we banking has become a better human experience. Simple helped usher in the age of modern banking, leading new banks challenging the status quo and pushing incumbent banks to make changes. Incumbents have responded in many ways, bringing a more modern approach to the public's benefit.

The personal inspiration for Fabric

When we moved back from Portland to New York, we got an apartment and my son turned two years old. I went to go buy life insurance. I was shocked how arcane and odd the process was. It took me three meetings with an insurance agent, 10 weeks overall, and a health exam to get covered. The agent was upselling me the whole time to buy whole life insurance. My co-founder was going through a similar situation and hit the same wall. We ended up deciding to start Fabric.

Not just about buying life insurance

We realized it's not just about buying life insurance. People don't wake up every morning thinking about how to buy life insurance. But when you become a parent, everything changes for you. You have to think about financial and legal services you never had to think about before -- life insurance is one of them. So is getting a last will and testament put together. And you need to start thinking more seriously about your finances and how they map with your partner's. Fabric is this one-stop shop for financial financial protection.

We hear from consumers that life insurance isn't a high consideration product. What we've done instead is take a more orthogonal approach by offering free services like a will and a vault for personal financial information. With Fabric Wills, for example, users can invite a will in a few minutes and invite all their important people in their lives so that everyone knows where everything is. We're creating a digital map of the family -- the executor, guardians, etc. -- all on the same platform.

Bringing in new customers

We do invest in the usual suspects -- digital channels like Instagram and Facebook. But the bulk of our focus is on this product-driven distribution. We've created these free products which are easily accessible and easy to use and through that process, we can deliver real value and trust with our audience. Over time, our customers can decide to upgrade to our paid products.

Reflecting on the insurance business

In many ways, the insurance industry is kind of sleepier than retail banking. It was designed to be that way, to be stable. As a result, professionals in the industry have a different worldview than the banking world, where the industry has shifted to fee income for profits. Those fees are concentrated among 10 percent of the banking population. So, you may have a more adversarial relationship than in insurance.

Insurance's challenges as a product

People who go through all the hassle of writing up a will and not signing it -- that is a product failure. That's true in the offline and online world. It's really up to product designers to figure out practical ways to make this experience provide real, and not just theater, value.

One of the main ways we do this is by creating this family network around Wills. In a way, we're creating a network of nudgers -- everyone in that family can provide social pressure to get the will signed and executed. We want to make our products procrastination-free.

0 comments on “Fabric’s Adam Erlebacher: ‘No one wakes up thinking about how to buy life insurance’”

Outlier OpinionsMakers

Podcasts

‘I think same day ACH is going to be in trouble’: TabaPay’s Tim Astanov

  • With RTP moving in, the choice of which payment rails to use and their cost/revenue profile matter even more.
  • TabaPay's Tim Astanov joins us on the podcast to discuss payment trends, more and better choices, and how he sees monetization efforts around RTP shaping up.
Zachary Miller | June 07, 2023
Podcasts

‘With GameStop, we basically doubled our userbase in just a few days after having 13X’d it the year before’: Public’s Jannick Malling

  • After a year of massive growth, investing app Public faced an incredible opportunity: the GameStop stock trading frenzy.
  • Co-CEO Jannick Malling joins us on the podcast to discuss how he and his team navigated this flood of interest in his firm and where the company is headed in the future.
Zachary Miller | May 23, 2023
Podcasts

‘The number one thing banks want right now is the fastest account opening software’: Fiserv’s Sunil Sachdev

  • As interest rates have risen, banks are getting more competitive over deposits.
  • We speak to Fiserv's head of fintech and growth about what the largest banking software and card processor is seeing in this new environment.
Zachary Miller | May 16, 2023
Podcasts

Inside Portage’s fintech portfolio and investment theses with Stephanie Choo

  • Portage is a fintech fund that invests globally, with early stage and later stage strategies.
  • Tearsheet editor Zack Miller interviews Partner Stephanie Choo on the podcast about investing in today's macroeconomic environment.
Zachary Miller | May 05, 2023
Library, Podcasts, Sponsored

‘With personalization, you have to start by addressing the silos’: Amdocs’ Bentzi Aviv

  • Just look at successful tech firms to see the value true personalization unlocks.
  • Banks aren't there just yet. But there are moves afoot to accelerate personalized product offers on top of existing core banking software.
Zachary Miller | May 03, 2023
More Articles