Not long after it announced plans to go nationwide, InsurTech startup Lemonade boasted that it broke a world record with the first-ever insurance claim handled solely by artificial intelligence, from triage through fraud mitigation down to payment—all in a manner of three seconds.

“Our team only found out about the entire thing after it was over,” wrote Lemonade co-founder Shai Wininger in the second installment of what the company calls its “Transparency Chronicles.” Asserting that “claims are fun,” the release reported that as of Jan. 18, Lemonade had handled six claims so far in the New Year, paying out $4,589 to customers.

Lemonade also announced metrics from its first quarter in the insurance market. By the end of 2016, the company secured $60 million from investors like Aleph, Sequoia, XL Innovate, General Catalyst and GV, formerly known as Google Ventures.

According to the self-reported data, the vast majority of Lemonade customers are urban dwellers in the 25-44 age range. Although only 13% of them switched over to the company from other insurers, Lemonade claims that customers love its “hassle-free switching process,” reporting that 21% switched from Allstate, 18% from State Farm, 15% from Travelers, 13% from Liberty Mutual, 13% from Assurant and 11% from GEICO.

In the announcement, Wininger also shrugged off the company’s original “peer-to-peer” label: “If I had to choose one thing that didn’t work as we had hoped, it’s our use of P2P to describe what Lemonade is,” he wrote. “In retrospect, it created a lot of confusion. People seem to read so many different things into this term, so we now described ourselves using phrases like AI and Behavioral Economics.”

Late last month, after Lemonade announced its plans to file for license in 46 states, IA published “Lemonade Goes Nationwide—But Is It the Great Disruptor?”—an article from Chris Boggs, executive director of the Big “I” Virtual University, about Lemonade’s character flaws and contradictions.

Whenever an insurance publication responds to Lemonade’s model, it’s a safe bet that the executives at Lemonade don’t walk around wringing their hands, wondering what they’re going to do, or that they’re concerned about our opinion in any way. According to Boggs, they probably threw a party if they happened to read IA’s article. After all, all press is good press.

“Although the ‘great disruptor’ is really the ‘great deceiver,’ Lemonade—and all InsurTech startups following in its footsteps—have and will benefit the independent agency system in two key ways,” Boggs says.

New technology. “Lemonade and other InsurTech firms have artfully conned venture capitalists into investing money to create technology independent agents and their carriers will ultimately use to benefit their customers,” Boggs says. “The industry is ecstatic about the potential of this new technology—the possibilities seem endless.”

Passion. “Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy reportedly said, ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve,’” Boggs says.” “History proves he was right.”

That’s what Lemonade and others have done for the independent agency system, Boggs suggests: The sleeping giant that is the independent agency system is now awake. “We have a renewed passion, purpose and resolve,” he says. “Lemonade, we needed you—but now you’re just in the way.”   

Compiled by IA editors.