Ben Madick is the CEO of Matic, a leading digital insurance marketplace of 40+ A-rated home & auto carriers. Ben was interviewed by Ron Rock, Senior Director at JobsOhio, a private nonprofit corporation designed to drive job creation and new capital investment in Ohio through business attraction, retention and expansion efforts.
Ben, can you highlight some of the exceptional growth that Matic has experienced over the past three years?
“Each year, we continue to set records for new revenue and customer growth. This past year was the best by far for every KPI (Key Performance Indicator) in the business. A lot of that is driven by the distribution partnerships we have. We recently crossed a milestone of having over 100 partnerships in categories like mortgage servicing, lending, and banking. Because we’re the leader in embedded P&C insurance, more partners have been seeking us out to pursue new revenue opportunities and create a simple shopping experience for their customers.
Another area fueling our growth is a laser focus on creating a great customer experience, even in a challenging macro environment for the insurance industry. Our vision is to simplify the world of insurance, and to do that, we've greatly expanded our digital sales capabilities, have added more carriers to our marketplace, and have continued to optimize our customer journey flows to put the customer first. Because of this, our NPS (Net Promoter Score) has remained consistently at 90, which is more than two times the industry average. We have some of the happiest customers of any industry.
To support this growth, we've prioritized growing our network of insurance carriers. One of the reasons we picked Ohio as our headquarters is because it is a hub for insurance. There are so many insurance carriers nearby, which helps us build relationships. Today, we have over 45 insurance carriers on our platform, which, three years ago, was probably under 20.”
How is your focus on culture driving Matic’s consistent inclusion as a Columbus Business First “Best Place to Work”?
“Culture evolves with growth, and the team has done a great job of embodying and reinforcing the foundational core value set that was defined in the early days and it’s a huge driver for employee happiness. I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to maintain a healthy eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) and be awarded as a ‘Best Place to Work’ for the fifth year in a row. Every year, we've leveled up in categories from the smallest category, ‘micro’, to ‘small’ and ‘medium’, and now we're in the ‘large’ category.”
What have you focused on to make sure your culture stays intact and true to the mission?
“Our people are our secret sauce. We put a heavy emphasis on finding teammates that align with our core values: quality, transparency and fun. We're very serious about maintaining a culture built around those values. That creates an environment where you have teamwork, mutual respect and inclusivity. That's also why our eNPS is quite high. Employees love working at Matic. We celebrate each other's wins and make sure we all know what our goals, vision and outcomes need to be. We also focus heavily on career development. Last year, we promoted over a hundred people internally to new positions or growth within their positions.
Another focus is benefits. We build a super competitive suite of benefits that are important to our employees. They’re free to unplug with unlimited PTO (Paid Time Off), we provide one hundred percent employer paid health benefits for individuals, and everyone gets stock options. So, we're all rooting for the same outcomes. We all affect each other's intrinsic values through stock value. But, I think the most important thing – one of our core values – is fun. We live fun all the time. We have happy hours, game nights, and social outings. Another part of our fun is our philanthropic arm, Matic Cares. Matic Cares’ goal is to support the people and communities in which we work. Within the last year, we've coordinated food and donation drives for the Mid Ohio Food Bank, organized a drive to support literacy for children in Ohio and a number of other things. We get fun not just from the social aspect but also from doing good in our community. The team really rallies around that.”
What’s next on the horizon for Matic?
“There's a lot going on at Matic right now. The first, and most important, initiative for us is to continue to invest in our technology. We’re a leader in digital-first online sales, which is historically unique for the insurance industry. That allows us to meet customers where they want to be and choose how and where they want to shop. We’re always making enhancements to the customer experience, as I mentioned previously.
I think the most exciting thing is that from buyer behavior trends, we've been able to create insurance carrier insights reports and supply this information to carriers in a way that they haven't seen before. We've been working really hard over the last couple of years to design these reports in a way that is meaningful to our insurance carrier partners. It will help them become better in what they do, whether it's pricing, product availability, or consumer experience. Ultimately, that supports our customers as well. That’s going to be a huge initiative for us as we continue to grow and be the best partner to our insurance carriers that we can be.
Lastly, we've been a leader in our space by starting with home insurance. Home insurance is probably the hardest of all the insurance personal products to sell and for consumers to understand. We started with this hardest one first, but we do sell others and have been able to build a completely digital auto experience, where you can purchase home and auto insurance at the same time. We want to continue to lean into that over the next year to make that bundle package better, while also thinking about other products to bundle, such as pet insurance and life insurance. Overall, we’re thinking about the customer holistically to really simplify their whole world of insurance and doubling down on that through technology.”
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