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Comment by vjvj | Hacker News Reader

Cool concept, looking forward to seeing roll out. Under your definition of p2p would heyguevara.com not fall into this too?

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The difference is that we're a fully regulated insurance company (as opposed to brokers like Guevara or other p2p insurance startups). It means that we can control the experience end to end and build an insurance company with a different business model than how traditional insurance companies do business. This is why we can give unclaimed money back to charity.

Why not give unclaimed money back to the consumer? Like a mutual insurance company, wouldnt that dissaude more folks from filing fraudulent* claims?

Not sure it would (it doesn't really for mutuals...)

Perhaps I should've worded my question better to avoid your snark.

>> This is why we can give unclaimed money back to charity.

Why is charity going to prevent fraudulent claims better than money going directly back to the consumer?

Hey, this is Maya from Lemonade, we believe people are inherently good and when faced with the option of embellishing their claim and pocketing more money or claiming what they deserve and make sure their cause receives the extra money left- most people (we hope) will choose the latter.

Maya,

You did not answer my inquiry.

Why is giving extra money to charity MORE of a deterrent to fraudulent claims than giving extra money back to the consumer?

Hey, It's not necessarily more a deterrent than giving cash back. 1. we are not yet legally allowed to give money back to our users (but we're working on it) 2. some behavioral economic theories actually suggest that cash is less an incentive than other more altruistic incentives. Once our give back to consumers will be active- I'll guess we'll be able to put our theories to the test- hope this answers your question

Hi Maya,

Mutual insurance companies exist in New York. Are you not legally allowed to give money back solely because you decided to incorporate as a benefit corporation?

From the TechCrunch article earlier, allegedly NY has a law that prohibits that.

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