Looking Back on 2021 - Record Growth, Mental Health and Moustaches
Written by Vikki Caruso, EVP of People | January 7, 2021
At Clearcover, we've established a year-end tradition of looking back over the last twelve months and taking stock of everything that has happened - the growth we've experienced, new initiatives established, and some of our biggest wins and lessons learned. Last year, I wrote about the unprecedented challenges brought on by the pandemic and how, relying on our core values, we adapted and continued to grow. We brought the lessons we learned last year into 2021 as we continued to expand our team and fuel innovation.
2021 was a year of milestones and record growth. Through it all, we maintained our focus on the well-being of our people and remained customer-centric, setting a new Clear Claims record of paying an eligible claim in under seven minutes!
We Celebrated Our 5th Anniversary
In November we celebrated our fifth anniversary. We took a moment to look back on how far we've come since 2016 when a team of three Chicago-based employees founded Clearcover to our present contingent of 420 Clearcover-ers located in twenty-seven states. Matt Dressel, Clearcover's first employee, shared some of his reflections on our first five years and talked about his favorite Clearcover tradition: Wins!
As much as we enjoyed reminiscing about all of our past successes and the milestones we reached and surpassed, we looked to the future and marked our anniversary by announcing our newly formed Leadership Principles. Our CEO, Kyle Nakatsuji, along with the senior executive team spent nearly a year distilling the best aspects of our core values and refining them into principles that empower every employee to act as a leader and guide the way all Clearcover-ers think, behave and interact with each other. Principles that encourage us to "Think 'Better-er'" and "Raise the Bar" help to inform our decisions on a daily basis and shape everyone's Clearcover experiences.
We Continued to Grow
2021 witnessed record expansion for Clearcover fueled by $200 million in Series D funding secured during the first half of the year. The funding allowed us to continue to invest in innovations for our insurance products and rapidly increase the size of our team.
New Clearcover-ers joined our team as we filled open positions across all departments. As we brought on new employees remotely while sustaining rapid growth, our onboarding process remained critical to smooth and successful transitions for all team members. Vanessa Jupe, Senior Executive of Digital Business, was one of the 245 employees who joined us this year. Her onboarding experience proved so positive that she was motivated to post a LinkedIn article after her first week at Clearcover, testifying to the success of our onboarding process and inclusivity of our culture.
To oversee this unprecedented expansion, Clearcover named Elan Mosbacher Chief Business Officer to scale operations and lead key initiatives. Additionally, we appointed three independent board members to guide our continued growth into 2022 and beyond: Steven Bensinger of TigerRisk Partners, Cynthia Hardy of Pivot Global Partners and Atif Rafiq.
We Focused on the Well-being of Our People
At Clearcover, we recognize that our people are our strongest assets. Our people-first culture works to ensure that all Clearcover-ers are able to thrive in an environment where they feel supported to show up as their authentic selves, communicate freely and openly with all levels of leadership, and where their mental health takes priority.
This year, we continued forth with the mission of our Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Council (EIDC): to create a workplace where teammates feel comfortable bringing their entire selves to work so they can contribute to their maximum ability. We recognize that the greater the array of viewpoints and opinions our employees bring to their work, the greater the benefit to Clearcover as a whole.
In 2021, we augmented the mental health initiatives we put in place during 2020 as a response to the effects of the pandemic. We added additional weekly, virtual yoga and meditation sessions and hosted monthly mental health workshops led by a licensed therapist who was also available for one-on-one sessions with all employees. We recognized the importance of flexibility for promoting mental health and, after instituting four-day workweeks all summer, we re-engineered the last day of the workweek into Focus Fridays. On Focus Fridays, Clearcover-ers are encouraged to keep their calendars free from meetings to devote time to the tasks they need to accomplish and to schedule personal appointments. Finally, we promoted mental health with extra doses of fun throughout the year by hiring virtual comedians, hosting “live” awards, celebrating “Friday Wins," and more. This year, we continued to talk openly about mental health and offer our employees the support they need to ensure a healthy, thriving team.
We Had Fun Together
We know that happy employees are motivated and productive employees, so we made time to have fun, laugh together, and celebrate with one another. Comedian Andy Hendrickson had us laughing until our sides hurt on Employee Appreciation Day while mentalist and magician Jamie Skelton left us in awe at our holiday celebration. We celebrated each other’s milestones, spotted some dopplegangers, and shared in pet obsessions. Some of us even crossed the finish line together at the HOKA ONE ONE Chicago 5K.
We Refreshed Our Brand
Clearcover stands out among long-established companies in our industry by focusing on the customer, providing them with the tools they need to make smart and empowered decisions. In September, we launched a brand refresh even more hyper-focused on customer-centricity. Our new branding features a cleaner, brighter and more simplified design and a more conversational voice. These elements reflect our goal to deliver simple insurance that puts customers in control, all in our award-winning app.
We Expanded Coverage and Formed New Partnerships
During 2021, Clearcover expanded to a total of twenty states after we launched our product in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, West Virginia and Virginia and received licenses to launch in many more. With the availability of our product in an increasing number of states, we formed numerous new partnerships with insurance agencies to widen our customer base. We started the year with 370 appointed agencies and will end with 1,950. This rapid expansion of partnerships fueled a year-over-year growth of total policies in force of 324%. In October, our new partnerships allowed us to reach a milestone of 1,000 policies sold in a month, and we've continued to grow over that number every month since.
We Came Together to Support Causes That Are Important to Us
Following one of our newly announced Leadership Principles to "Act Like an Underdog," Clearcover launched our Inspired Underdogs program to sponsor NCAA athletes for the 2021-2022 school year. We became the first auto insurance company to support student-athletes in the NIL era and pledged $10,000 per player. As Kyle wrote when we announced the program, "We believe in underdogs because we ourselves are underdogs." Clearcover currently sponsors eleven college athletes with unique underdog stories. We share the underdog spirit of these student-athletes and we are proud to support their hard work and dedication.
Along with honoring underdogs, we supported men’s health. This November, Kyle knew he wanted to align with Movember, an organization that address the crisis in several areas of men's health including mental health and suicide prevention. Clearcover lost one of our employees, Isaac Moldofsky, to suicide in January 2020, so we formed our Movember team with a goal of raising $5,000 in Isaac's memory. Clearcover-ers were encouraged to grow a moustache for the cause or raise funds in any way of their choosing. We reached our initial fundraising goal in only four days. Motivated by our swift efforts, Kyle and our COO, Derek Brigham, promised to pose for a mustachioed “Step Brothers-esque” portrait if we could reach a new fundraising goal of $10,000. We did it less than a week later… We continued to push ourselves well past our initial goal and raised over $13,000 during our first Movember. Not only did we come together as a team to support men's health, but many of us now have a new background image on our laptops.
We Were Recognized for our Workplace and Commitment to Innovation
Clearcover's focus on employee happiness through a variety of perks, benefits, and open communication directly led to recognition in several different workplace award categories. In the past year, Comparably recognized Clearcover in several categories for small to mid-sized companies: Best CEO, Best Engineering Teams, Best Company For Career Growth, Best CEO for Diversity, Best Perks & Benefits, Happiness, Best Compensation, and Best Culture. In addition, we've made the lists of BuiltIn’s Best Places to Work 2021 and Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work 2021. Most recently, we've been included on Purpose's List of Chicago Companies with Best Benefits 2022.
In addition to workplace awards, Clearcover was recognized for our leadership and innovation. Our CEO, Kyle Nakatsuji, was included in Crain's Chicago Business 40 Under 40 for 2021, and Chicago Inno's Fire Awards recognized Clearcover as one of the 50 Innovators Heating Up Chicago. To wrap up the year, Chicago Innovation Awards presented us with the Walgreens Digital Transformation Award.
Looking Ahead to 2022...
Looking forward to 2022, immediate plans include growing and expanding our team, specifically in product, tech and insurance product roles. If you're ready to join us in the new year, we invite you to apply for one of our open positions. Cheers to 2022!
