Insurance 2.0: Insuring the Sharing Economy & Sharing the Insurance Economy

The rise of the sharing economy (including firms such as Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit) has created new insurance challenges as assets traditionally insured under personal lines policies are being used by micropreneurs to generate income on a part-time, and often full-time, basis. The peer-to-peer nature of these unique risks is unprecedented as they have only recently been enabled by advances in mobile technology. The insurance industry has been extremely cautious about entering this space, even as regulators have increased calls for a solution bridging the insurance gaps between personal and commercial coverage. We believe this peer-to-peer trend will continue and could culminate in true peer-to-peer insurance, or risk transfer between individuals, with regulators constantly playing catch up and insurers either adapting or being displaced. In preparing this paper we interviewed executives from major players in the sharing economy and the insurance industry.

Keywords: sharing; collaborative consumption; ridesharing; homesharing; carsharing; peer-to-peer; peers; Uber; Lyft; Airbnb; Getaround; RelayRides; Lending Club; Farmers Insurance Group; Greenlight Re; James River Insurance Company