Twenty questions across licensing, product depth, integration, economics and operations — with the red flags that should end a conversation early.
We build one of the platforms this guide evaluates, so read it knowing where it comes from — and notice that every question below is one we believe we answer well, which is precisely why we are comfortable arming you with the list. Ask all of it, of everyone, including us.
Licensing and liability — the conversation-enders
- Under whose regulatory permission does distribution run in my market? "Yours" without paperwork is a red flag; "a licence we're applying for" is a no.
- Which licensed insurers underwrite each product, and can I see the panel? Cover without a named underwriter is not cover.
- What liability, if any, transfers to my platform — premium handling, claims, mis-selling? The right answer is a short, written one.
- Who handles disclosures, cooling-off rights and complaints, and where is that logged?
A platform that cannot answer these four in one meeting, with documents, is asking you to carry risk it hasn't priced.
Product depth — beyond the demo category
- Which categories are live today (not "on the roadmap"), and with how many insurers each?
- Can pricing reflect my transaction data — the actual vehicle, trip, or employee count — or is it quoted from generic tables?
- Single-provider and comparison modes: can I run both and switch without a rebuild?
- What happens at renewal, and does my platform stay in that loop or lose the customer to the insurer?
Integration — where promises get measurable
- Time from sandbox key to first issued test policy, measured on my stack, not claimed on a slide.
- Is the sandbox response-identical to production? Ask for one payload of each and diff them.
- Idempotent purchases, webhooks for policy lifecycle events, stable document URLs — the specifics predict the integration month better than any reference call.
- What data do I have to send, and what does the platform pre-fill from what I already hold?
Economics — the part your CFO will audit
- How exactly is my revenue share computed — per policy, per premium, tiered by volume? Get the formula, not the range.
- When is it paid, against what statement, and can finance export the policy-level detail?
- Who bears refunds and mid-term cancellation clawbacks, and how do they hit my line?
- Are there minimums, exclusivity clauses, or marketing obligations hiding in the agreement?
Transparent per-policy economics you can recompute from your own data is the standard. Anything you must take on faith, don't.
Operations — the year after launch
- Claims: who does my customer contact, in what language, and what is the platform's actual role when an insurer is slow?
- What reporting do I get on attach rate, conversion funnels and payout status — daily, in a dashboard, or monthly, in a PDF?
- What is the process when a regulator's rules change mid-contract?
- Ask for a partner who has been live for over a year — launch references are easy; year-two references are the truth.
Scoring it
Weight licensing and economics highest: integration pain ends, but a bad liability structure or opaque payout compounds forever. Any vendor — again, including us — should expect to be evaluated on evidence: documents for the compliance questions, a diff for the sandbox question, a stopwatch for the integration question, and a spreadsheet you built yourself for the economics. The good platforms will enjoy the exam. That reaction is itself the tell.