It’s a good idea to protect both your assets and your loved ones with insurance as your life evolves — after all, you never know what's around the corner. And it’s also a good idea to protect your bottom line by comparing several insurers’ offers before you choose a policy.
If comparing insurance quotes one by one sounds tedious, Policygenius might save you some time by allowing you to generate multiple quotes simultaneously and choose the best offer. But it’s not an ideal platform for comparing all types of insurance.
Quick Facts: Policygenius
- Types of insurance: Life, disability, homeowners, auto
- Cost: Free to use
- Availability: Nationwide
. . .
What Is Policygenius?
Policygenius was founded in 2014 as an independent insurance marketplace that allowed people to compare quotes and purchase policies from different providers of life insurance. The site has since expanded its partnerships to provide comparisons or referrals for other insurance types.
Aside from serving as a policy comparison platform, Policygenius also houses a large library of educational materials covering the ins and outs of the insurance world in accessible language. Because it’s a quote comparison site, it processes a massive amount of data that can help you make insurance decisions — like, for instance, the average monthly rates for term life insurance by gender, age, and coverage amount.
Policygenius stands out overall as a good resource for those who want informed help choosing between offers for three types of insurance. But for all of Policygenius’ strengths, its quote comparison process has room for improvement in certain areas.
Pros
- Great for comparing life, disability, and homeowners insurance
- Stellar customer service
- Free educational resources
Cons
- Limited policy types
- Potentially inaccurate quotes
- Requires a lot of personal information
How Does Policygenius Work?
Policygenius facilitates the comparison of insurance policies from several different insurance companies, but it does not provide insurance policies itself. Policygenius is an insurance broker; it serves as an intermediary between people who need insurance and insurers who sell it. It’s licensed to sell insurance in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Getting quotes can take anywhere from five to 20 minutes and entails providing personal information that varies depending on the type of insurance you’re interested in.
How does Policygenius make money?
There's no fee to use Policygenius. Rather, Policygenius makes its money by being paid a commission for each insurance policy that it sells. The commission is included in the policy prices that you’re quoted by Policygenius agents, and its amount may vary by insurer and policy type.
Policygenius claims that it recommends policies without bias and that it doesn’t give preference to any one insurer over another when it comes to the commission.
Types of Insurance Available Through Policygenius
Policygenius allows you to directly compare quotes and purchase policies for life, disability, homeowners, and auto insurance. It currently does not facilitate direct quote comparisons for pet insurance or renters insurance, but it does give referrals to partner providers in those fields.
Let’s take a look at how the quote experience differs for the most popular types of insurance you can explore through Policygenius.
Policygenius life insurance
Policygenius allows you to generate life insurance quotes from 12 different insurers: Banner, Brighthouse, Corebridge, Foresters, Lincoln, Mutual of Omaha, Pacific Life, Principal, Protective, Prudential, Symetra, and Transamerica.
You’ll need to provide information related to the following topics to get a Policygenius life insurance quote:
- Basic stuff (gender, date of birth, address, etc.)
- Marital status
- Employment status and income
- Height and weight
- Tobacco, alcohol, and substance use history
- Basic medical history for you and your immediate family
- Driving record and criminal background
- Travel history and upcoming travel plans
It’s a pretty clear application process overall. Explanatory guidelines are provided when you hover over fields with more open-ended answers (like income-related fields), and most of the prompts are logical for life insurance. That said, some of the information requested is oddly specific. For instance, you’re asked to explain your international travel plans for the next year, which seems excessive for simply getting preliminary quotes.
After inputting your personal info, you’ll be prompted to identify your reasons for taking out life insurance, which indicates to the algorithm whether you need term or permanent life insurance and the approximate coverage amount that’s advisable.
For term life insurance, Policygenius will recommend a coverage amount and term length based on the information you provided, which you can adjust for higher or lower preliminary quote estimates.
The quote comparison process is completed by calling in to speak with a Policygenius agent, who will confirm the details you entered online. Wait times are typically minimal, and the call might take around 15 to 20 minutes.
At the end of your chat, the Policygenius agent can email you a few quotes that reflect the best insurance premiums and most flexible policies (e.g., no medical exam) available to you based on your questionnaire responses.
Policygenius agents have a particularly deep knowledge of the life insurance market and can recommend specific insurers that might be accommodating if you have an atypical medical history or policy amount requirements.
Get a life insurance quote from Policygenius.
Policygenius disability insurance
Obtaining a disability insurance quote through Policygenius involves answering a series of questions about your professional and educational life and background, like your annual income, current occupation, and degree attainment. You also need to answer some questions about your medical history and driving record, though it’s less thorough than a screening for life insurance.
Your questionnaire responses give Policygenius the insights it needs to recommend a maximum benefit amount (the amount you’ll be paid monthly in the event of a disability), which you can adjust downward for a lower premium.
You can choose from three waiting periods (90, 180, and 365 days) for your disability benefits to kick in in the event that you become disabled; the longer the waiting period, the lower your premium. You also choose the benefit period, meaning the length of time that your benefits will be paid out to you, which can range from two years until retirement.
Finally, you can customize the policy by including or removing riders. At that point, you’ll be given an approximate quote range based on the information you provided, and you’ll need to submit your phone number for a Policygenius agent to reach out to you with more accurate quotes from different providers.
Policygenius homeowners insurance
Policygenius allows you to compare homeowners insurance policies or bundled homeowners/auto insurance policies. Quotes can be generated by filling out a questionnaire about your home’s details, including its:
- Address
- Home type (single-family, condo, etc.)
- Square footage, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, construction and foundation type, etc.
- Commercial use (e.g., rooms being rented out)
The platform does a surprisingly good job of accurately pre-populating fields for the details of your home, which saves you time. Pre-populated info may be pulled from public records, according to the Policygenius team.
You’re also prompted to identify home features you have that might lead to premium discounts, like smoke detectors and security systems.
The quote questionnaire takes about 10 minutes or so to fill out, and quotes are emailed to you once you complete it.
Policygenius car insurance
Though Policygenius does technically support auto insurance quote comparisons, this process is inconsistent compared to the services it offers for other insurance types.
If Policygenius’ auto insurance partners work with drivers in your ZIP code, you can fill out a questionnaire about your vehicle, driving history, and coverage needs and receive quotes from a few insurers. If your ZIP code isn’t supported (and it appears many aren’t), the process of getting quotes is a bumpier ride.
You may be directed offsite to insurance partners’ websites, where you’ll likely need to fill out quote forms for each different insurer you want to compare, one by one.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll actually get a quote after filling out a partner auto insurer’s form, as the Policygenius auto insurance algorithm doesn’t always do a good job of filtering out insurers that aren’t a match for your driver profile. This means some drivers will be repeatedly redirected through a maze of potential insurers and questionnaires.
Given this level of unpredictability, using Policygenius isn’t one of the best ways to shop for auto insurance.
Is Policygenius Legit?
Policygenius is certainly a legitimate platform for finding competitive life, homeowners, and disability insurance quotes. If those types of insurance are of interest to you, Policygenius can help you save time by allowing you to fill out one form that generates multiple quotes from a pool of partner insurers.
Although its quote comparison process demands that you submit sensitive personal information, like your phone number, Policygenius claims it won’t sell your personal information and that it uses “industry-standard technical, physical, administrative, and organizational controls to ensure the security and confidentiality of your data.”
That said, Policygenius won’t work reliably for everyone, and at times it could do a better job of aligning its advertised services with its actual deliverables.
Alternatives to Policygenius
While Policygenius is one of the most popular insurance comparison sites, it’s not the only game in town.
Policygenius vs. SelectQuote
Like Policygenius, SelectQuote is best known for its life insurance quote comparisons. The life insurance quoting process for SelectQuote is largely similar to the process for Policygenius, except you identify the type of life insurance and the coverage amount you’re interested in rather than those being suggested to you by the platform based on your survey responses.
SelectQuote generates quotes from 11 life insurance providers, compared with the network of 12 that Policygenius works with, although there’s notable overlap between both networks.
The quoted life insurance rates we received from SelectQuote were very similar to the quoted rates we received from Policygenius, probably because there’s a significant degree of overlap between the two platforms’ insurance providers.
That said, the platforms’ provider rosters do vary enough that they might yield different quoted rates for some people, particularly if you have a medical history that may be disqualifying for more insurers associated with one platform than the other.
Policygenius vs. The Zebra
If you’re primarily interested in finding the most competitive auto insurance rates available to you, The Zebra’s comparison mechanism seems far more reliable than the often circular auto insurance referrals from Policygenius.
The Zebra’s questionnaire process for getting auto insurance quotes takes about five minutes. You’ll be asked for information related to your:
- Car (year, make, model, and trim)
- Commute distance
- Auto use (personal or business)
- Auto ownership status (paid in full, making payments, or leasing)
- Residence (address, rent/own, etc.)
- Driving and insurance history (current insurer, past tickets, etc.)
- Preferred coverage levels
- Other personal details (marital status, educational background, approximate credit score, etc.)
The questionnaire also provides an opportunity to select premium discounts you might qualify for or be interested in, like being a military veteran or enrolling in autopay. After completing the questionnaire, you’ll be given links to quotes from three recommended auto insurers.
You’ll be directed off The Zebra’s site to the sites of the recommended insurers, and you’ll need to confirm some of the details you supplied to The Zebra, which will take another minute or two. But it’s nonetheless a faster process than hunting down car insurance quotes individually.
Final Thoughts
Policygenius can make it easy to search and shop for life, disability, and homeowners insurance. You can view offers from different insurers and compare which one best fits your budget. It also offers a lot of educational information and has a rich data collection, which may help with your decision-making.
While Policygenius does offer the ability to compare auto insurance offers, that feature is still a bit clunky, so you may want to start your search elsewhere. Renters and pet insurance also aren't currently offered through Policygenius.
