On May 29, Atlanta-based ebix.com struck a deal with Esurance Inc., a national quote-to-claims Internet-based provider of personal auto insurance. Under the terms of the deal, Esurance will offer instant online auto insurance quotes to ebix.com clients in more than 25 states and will offer real-time binding of its policies bought on the site. The agreement will give Esurance a broader distribution range to market its product.
“We are committed to providing the consumer the ability to bind insurance online, while getting multiple quotes from a variety of carriers,” said ebix.com CEO and President Robin Raina. “For example, we are working with 14 auto carriers towards automating the quoting process on the ebix.com site.”
In what looked only a few weeks ago like its move to do just that, the company was undertaking a plan to purchase some of the assets of iwix.net. Chicago-based iwix was one of the first independent business-to-business online marketplaces, bringing together agents and brokers with specialty insurance carriers. iwix halted operations in April when it was not able to raise sufficient funding.
The deal with ebix was to include software, the intellectual property rights of all iwix products, along with access to the iwix agency and its carrier associates. The move would have granted ebix access to more than 3,100 independent brokers and agencies, along with 43 carrier/MGA members who signed on with iwix over the last year.
But what looked like a good deal on paper suddenly fell by the wayside, with officials at both ebix and iwix reluctant to offer a clear reason why. Daryl Richard, a public relations spokesman representing ebix.com, said only that “the deal is no longer valid.”
According to former iwix.net CEO Max Carter, the deal with ebix was not what it seemed—”ebix.com tried to change the terms of the deal after we thought we had an agreement.” Carter indicated that iwix has not yet found anyone else to purchase its assets, and that almost all its former employees have now found new jobs.
Earlier this year, ebix.com arranged a strategic deal with Atlanta-based Ins-Site Insurance Solutions. In that agreement, ebix purchased certain assets of Ins-Site, to include ownership of its entire customer base and intellectual property rights of all Ins-Site products.
Ins-Site has developed Internet-based items used to automate manual tasks during the exchange of data between carriers, agents and insureds to reduce expenses and increase efficiencies.
As part of the arrangement, ebix added 8,000 agents and several new carriers to its list of business-to-business (B2B) clients.
For ebix.com, the future is to simply grow and grow wisely.
“Our objective is to be the exclusive insurance provider to four of the top 10 traffic sites in the U.S. by the end of this year,” Raina said.
“We also plan to enter new markets like Europe and India with our entire suite of B2B and B2C offerings. In addition, we believe that development projects targeted towards improving carrier and agency productivity will constitute a good part of our revenue stream.”
According to Yahoo!Finance, for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2000, total revenues for ebix.com fell 6 percent to $11.8 million. Net loss fell 40 percent to $11.4 million. “Revenues reflect a decrease in support revenue associated with legacy products. Lower loss reflects decreased S/G/A expenses due to a reduction in staffing levels” the site reported.
ebix.com reported profitable results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2001. The company, which was founded in 1976 as Delphi Information Systems Inc., noted first quarter net income attributable to common stockholders of $140,000 or $0.01 per share. Total revenues were $3.145 million for first quarter 2001, compared to revenues of $2.855 million for first quarter 2000.
“ebix is targeting a profitable year while showing top line growth in all areas,” Raina commented. “We today own the insurance channel on altavista.com (eighth highest traffic site on the Internet) and are the exclusive provider to about.com (sixth highest traffic site), in addition to 120 other portals.”
The latest deal with Esurance should serve to move ebix along toward its goals.
“Since the launch of the ebix.com marketplace nearly two years ago, we have been striving to integrate the entire insurance policy process for consumers online, from quote to closure,” Raina said. “Esurance validates our integration efforts.”
Phil Swift, CIO of Esurance, stated: “Our Automobile Quotation Web Service allows us to seamlessly offer our business partners access to our underwriting and rating engines with minimal application modifications. The functionality inside the service is transparent to the applicant and to our partner, thus enabling us to provide high-value services to the consumer when and where they want them, at a competitive price.”
Esurance is an operating subsidiary of Folksamerica Holding Company Inc., a subsidiary of White Mountains Insurance Group.
Topics Carriers Profit Loss Agencies
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