Steph Tulley sees her age as a strength as she takes on the InsurTech space.
She went from a receptionist at a small insurance company to owning her own insurance brokerage firm in just eight years. As her career developed throughout her early twenties, Tulley saw that the insurance space wasn’t meeting the needs of Gen Zs and Millennials. The reality is that individuals struggle to find information on policy types, limit amounts, and coverage options needed for their specific business.
She decided to change that with Actuology.
The Tampa-based InsurTech startup, run out of Embarc Collective, is addressing what Tulley said is the biggest problem when it comes to consumers finding insurance. “There are too many hands and too many scenarios…it doesn’t let the machine run fluidly,” she told Hypepotamus. “Having a great system with a great interface and a great user experience is amazing, but unless you’re having the right conversation prior to them landing [on the website], you’re always going to depend on a face-to-face conversation.”
Actuology automates much of this process. The advising platform eliminates the need for an hour-long conversation with an insurance agent – something that is important for Gen Z and Millennial consumers.
The automated platform then provides insurance providers a list of “highly qualified leads” needing customized insurance plans.
“We’re not eliminating advisors, but we’re a system that does the upfront grunt work. We let great advisors get back to what they do best,” she added.
Tulley recognizes that the insurance space is behind the automation trend that we see in the fintech and mobile banking space.
“The time to do something like this was probably five years ago…and I kept waiting for one of the big guys with the payroll and bankroll [to build this],” Tulley told Hypepotamus. “So after waiting for someone to build something like this, I realized I had to.”
A New Look At InsurTech
Tulley knows InsurTech isn’t the tech vertical you are most likely to see a young founder building in. But having spent her career in the space, she knows the wealth of opportunities available.
“I like to say InsurTech is FinTech’s less sexy, but highly lucrative cousin,” Tulley smiled while explaining the opportunities she sees in the growing tech vertical. While FinTech focuses on building assets, InsurTech is all about protecting assets.
She believes InsurTech is following the trends and the roadmap set up by FinTech over the last ten years. “I always tell investors or anyone who’s interested in the InsurTech space to look at FinTech, because what they’re doing now is what we’re catching up to,” she added.
And she is in good company as she builds up Actuology in Tampa. The city is home to several insurance-focused startups like TrustLayer, Slide, and Homee that are tackling unique problems in the asset protection space.
The team is currently working on securing pre-seed funding of around $500,000 to “ramp up and scale at a quicker pace,” Tulley added.
“We have Embarc Collective and all of Tampa Bay behind us, they want us to succeed. And that’s very rare in an environment that’s highly competitive.”
