QuickenInsurance: The Race to Click and Close
Team #1 ? Jerry, Elena, Rohit, Matt
BUS 755
Dr. Wen
Background of Steve Aldrich
Steve Aldrich graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in July 1995. One month after graduating, Steve and a partner decided to launch an online insurance "dot-com", as they saw a niche for online insurance products. One year after launching his company, Mr. Aldrich sold it to Intuit for $10 million. Steve then became the general manager of QuickenInsurance, which was owned by Intuit. In the summer of 2000, Mr. Aldrich was making a transition from general manager of QuikenInsurance to general manager of Quiken.com.
Insurance Industry Overview
By the late 1990's, the insurance industry was doing through significant transformation. The insurance industry of the 1990's was considered to be mature at $270 billion, and growth of the market had slowed considerably. The industry as a whole was large, inefficient and highly fragmented. The decision to purchase insurance was not straightforward. The process was time consuming and the information made it very difficult to make comparisons, as there were variations between companies and products in terms of costs, service, etc.
In 1998, there were over 1 million insurance agents selling insurance to U.S. consumers. Some insurance agents sold policies from a number of carriers, while others sold policies from one specific company. Agents were paid for sales generated for the insurance company. Agents became a very expensive way for companies to sell their products and, as a result, the costs often exceeded the premiums generated by any given p ...