The insurance quote funnel is broken, and carriers told us why

Over 3 days at ITC Vegas, Checkr’s insurance team sat down with more than 100 carriers and managing general agents (MGAs) from top-10 auto and life carriers to non-standard auto and specialty programs. While the lines of business ranged widely, most conversations came back to the same problem: The data carriers need to underwrite risk is priced in a way that punishes them for using it at first quote. Several carriers told us they feel stuck with vendors and pricing models that haven't changed in decades, and they're actively looking for a new approach.

Carriers build entire underwriting workflows around managing data costs, and the effects show up across the business. Underwriters work with less data than they’d like, applicants abandon applications due to friction or slow processes, and risk slips through.

Frustration with per-pull pricing came up again and again. Most carriers buy motor vehicle records (MVRs) and other risk data per pull, so a carrier pays the same for a record on an applicant who walks away as for one who binds. An underwriting leader at a regional auto carrier said, “That’s our biggest underwriting cost.” For carriers trying to grow, every new quote adds to the bill.

Legacy vendors set those terms, and carriers have had little leverage to change them. One carrier couldn’t say what it pays per record because its MVR pricing is so convoluted.

The cost compounds when carriers pull the same person more than once. Some carriers pull data at new business and again at renewal, or run a second MVR when a customer abandons an application and comes back 3 months later.

To keep data spend down, some carriers stage orders and leave borderline calls to underwriters. The data bill shrinks, but the cost moves to underwriter judgment and repeat work. “There’s too much obvious subjectivity right now with the underwriter because they’re trying to be cost preventative,” an underwriting and product leader at a national auto and property insurer said.

Other carriers order everything up front to save time. “We do a terrible job when it comes to ordering in a predictive way, where you order the minimum number of tests,” said an actuary at a national life carrier. 

Both habits share an underlying cause: Per-pull pricing forces carriers to guess up front which applicants are worth spending on.

Pay-per-bind pricing means a carrier pays for underwriting data only when a policy is bound, not every time it pulls a record. Lower per-record prices can shrink the bill, but carriers still pay for every applicant who walks away.

That's why Checkr prices insurance data per bind. Carriers can run signals on every applicant at first quote and pay only when a policy is written. Data spent tracks written premiums instead of shopping volume. Checkr has built over 2,400 direct connections to court and government sources and serves more than 140,000 customers.

The pricing model resonated most with carriers with high quote volume. “We like to write a lot of quotes, and we’re okay with our conversion being a little lower than others,” said a personal lines executive at an auto carrier. Another carrier started modeling the return on the spot, comparing how many records it orders against policies bound.

Pay-per-bind fits some books better than others. A carrier that binds most of what it quotes has less to gain, and per-pull pricing is deeply built into workflows and contracts. But quote volume isn’t slowing down. In J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Insurance Shopping Study, 57% of auto insurance customers had actively shopped for a new policy in the past year, the highest rate in the study’s 19-year history.

Moving risk signals to the top of the funnel raises the stakes on its quality, including how complete the report is. A state MVR can miss violations from other states, so a driver who recently moved can look clean on paper. One national life carrier has been looking for driver history across state lines for exactly this reason. Carriers also described providers returning accurate records matched to the wrong person, whether from a misspelled name or a recent address change.

Fraud also came up in several conversations. Several carriers drew a line between fraud they want to block outright and applicants who simply carry more risk. Data earlier in the quote funnel matters most for the second group. Those applicants can still be written, as long as carriers see the risk in time to price it. 

Even carriers who are satisfied with their current data providers want a credible alternative to test their coverage and negotiate from a stronger position. They also want raw records that underwriters and regulators can follow. “How do we go back to a client and say we declined you because you were a 104 and not a 108?” asked an actuary at a national life carrier.

Price only matters if the data holds up. One California carrier noted that a clear MVR isn’t helpful if the driver has a DUI that the record missed.

Quote volume keeps climbing, and per-pull pricing turns each new shopper into a cost. Most of our ITC conversations ended with a plan to run a side-by-side data study on the carrier’s own historical applicants. The study surfaces what most carriers can’t get from their own systems today:

The results show whether pay-per-bind fits your business before you change a single workflow or contract. If your team is weighing the same tradeoffs, talk to our insurance team about running a proof of value against your own book.

Wendy Lu

Wendy Lu covers risk for insurance carriers and trust and safety for marketplaces. She writes about underwriting risk, insurance innovation, fraud prevention, platform safety, and how identity, criminal, public record, and driving data power safer decisions.