EXCLUSIVE: Kin Insurance's CEO On The Competition, National Expansion Plans, DTC Advantage

Kin Insurance is set to go public via special purpose acquisition company Omnichannel Acquisition Corp OCA in a deal with a pro forma enterprise value of approximately $1.03 billion.

Sean Harper, co-founder and CEO of Kin Insurance, and Matt Higgins, chairman and CEO of Omnichannel Acquisition Corp., appeared on Benzinga's YouTube show "SPACs Attack" for an exclusive interview Tuesday.

Kin Insurance aims to change home insurance from what it is to what it should be. Kin Insurance is a fully licensed home insurance technology company that provides affordable coverage to homeowners in catastrophe-prone regions.

Kin Insurance is a leading player in a fast-growing industry, Harper told Benzinga.

Kin Insurance Vs. The Competition: What separates Kin Insurance from its competition are its unit economics, Harper said.

Kin Insurance is also designed for the digital era, while competitors are stuck in the past, he added. 

The company operates a direct-to-consumer business that helps to speed up the process for its customers, Harper said, adding that agents are expensive and slow down the homeowners insurance process. 

Customers tend to continue to use Kin Insurance after experiencing the efficiency of the company's process, the CEO told Benzinga. 

"We keep 92% of our customers from one year to the next and our customers save a lot of money."

Kin Insurance's National Expansion: Kin Insurance is taking a tactical approach to its national expansion efforts. 

The company is focused on targeting "large coastal states where a lot of people live, where insurance is more expensive than it is in the rest of the country and where our big data underwriting advantage is more useful to us," Harper said. 

It can take time to be granted insurance licensing from states, but the way around it is to acquire insurance companies that already have existing licenses in other states, he said. 

Kin Insurance is planning to expand nationally by 2025. 

Higgins On Direct-To-Consumer Advantage: The homeowner's insurance industry has a $100-billion total addressable market, Higgins told Benzinga.

Kin Insurance is a fantastic business and "one of the best DTCs that I have come across in my experience," he said. "This business was born to be direct-to-consumer. If this could have been sold DTC 30 years ago, it would have been sold that way."

It's much easier to scale nationally as a direct-to-consumer business in the homeowners insurance industry, Higgins said. 

Higgins told Benzinga that there are a lot of things he, the team and Omnichannel Acquisition Corp. will be doing to help Kin Insurance scale nationally. 

The team has been focused on making sure the Kin Insurance brand indentity is large enough to accomodate other segments beyond homeowner's insurance, he said.

Kin Insurance has plans to eventually expand into auto insurance, life insurance, umbrella insurance and more. 

See the full interview here:

SPAC Notes: Kin Insurance was compelled by what Higgins and the rest of the team at Omnichannel Acquisition Corp. could bring to the company, he said, adding that the dynamic team made the SPAC route the obvious choice. 

Higgins told Benzinga that Kin Insurance fit the bill as a mission-driven company with great management in a change-resistant industry.

The SPAC merger is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Pending shareholder approval, the combined company will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the ticker symbol "KI."

OCA Price Action: Omnichannel Acquisition Corp. has traded as high as $11.05 and as low as $9.60 since its IPO in November.

The stock was down 0.10% at $9.83 at the close Tuesday. 

See also: How to Buy SPAC Warrants