Company attributes
Other attributes
Hippo is a home insurance group that works to create new standards of care and protection for homeowners. The company uses municipal building records, satellite imagery, and smart home devices to streamline the quote and onboarding experience for the protection of products and possessions inside a home, including appliances, consumer electronics, and home offices. Hippo was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
In August of 2021, Hippo went public through a SPAC merger with Reinvent Technology Partners Z. The merger valued Hippo at $5 billion, a jump from the previous evaluation at $1.5 billion from November of 2020. The deal followed other private companies that opted to go public through a SPAC merger around the time and listed Hippo under the ticker symbol "HIPO" on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
In August of 2023, following an earnings report that showed a net loss of $108 million attributed to the company's second-quarter earnings, Hippo announced that the company would temporarily stop accepting new business and policies. Instead, the company noted it would evaluate the risks, geographical diversification, and enhanced underwriting and rate actions for the company's policies to ensure they offered continued growth and to stem the losses.
Beginning as early as September of 2023, CEO Rick McCathron reported that the pause was being slowly lifted in areas the company felt were priced adequately, noting that the company felt they had addressed some of their losses, which were in part over the company's plan to improve their portfolio by way of diversification. This came during a time when others in the insurance industry were pausing new business in given markets and pulling out of some markets, based on market conditions.
Hippo uses different technologies to make insurance more affordable for consumers and more profitable by insurers in part by handling many processes almost entirely online. This online process allows homeowners to take as little as sixty seconds to get a quote and includes other smart-home monitoring systems to provide support for the insured. Hippo offers policies through Spinnaker Insurance, which it acquired in 2020. Hippo's policies include the following:
- Dwelling coverage—coverage for physical property and any attached structures
- Additional structures—coverage for additional structures on a property, such as sheds and fences
- Loss of Use—payments for living expenses when a homeowner's home cannot be lived in due to loss covered by a policy
- Personal possessions—coverage for the cost of repairing or replacing damaged belongings
- Personal liability—coverage for legal expenses and damages from lawsuits brought against a homeowner by someone injured on their property
Hippo Home Care is a mobile application intended to support homeowners and offer them insight into their home's health and access to expert advice to solve problems in a home and stop them from escalating into larger problems. The app offers users a personalized, dynamic health profile for their home, with maintenance suggestions to improve overall home health.
Hippo offers insurance policies that include smart home monitoring systems intended to help homeowners protect their homes and prevent claims from happening in the first place. These devices are intended to protect from water damage, fire, and break-ins and provide homeowners with greater peace of mind. Hippo also offers users discounts on policies for being part of the Hippo Smart Home policy.
