The Root advantage is derived from our unique ability to segment individual risk based on complex behavioral data and proprietary telematics, a customer experience built for ease of use and a product offering made possible with our full-stack insurance structure all uniquely integrated into a single cloud-based technology platform that captures the entire insurance value chain-from customer acquisition to claims and administration to ongoing customer engagement.
•Reduce marketing as a percentage of premium. Recurring customer premiums have no associated customer acquisition costs and minimal underwriting costs, driving profitability. As we grow our business, we anticipate, consistent with industry norms, that a greater proportion of our premiums will be from customer renewals without associated marketing costs.
As a rapidly growing full-stack insurance company, we currently employ a “capital light” model, which utilizes a variety of reinsurance structures at elevated levels of reinsurance. These reinsurance structures deliver three core objectives (1) Top-Line Growth Without a Commensurate Increase in Regulatory Capital Requirements. (2) Support of Customer Acquisition Costs and (3) Protection from Outsized Losses or Tail Events. While reinsurance has been core to our strategy since inception, beginning on July 1, 2020, we increased our use of third-party quota share reinsurance with the implementation of our staggered multi-treaty approach to our program. We expect to maintain an elevated level of third-party quota share reinsurance while rapidly growing our business in order to operate a capital light business model. As our business scales, we expect to have the flexibility to reduce our quota share levels to maximize the return to shareholders.
Sales and marketing includes spend related to performance and partnership channels, channel media, advertising, branding, public relations, consumer insights and referral fees. These expenses also include related Personnel Costs and Overhead. We incur sales and marketing activities for all product offerings. Sales and marketing are expensed as incurred.
(1) Adjustments from other insurance benefit (expense) includes report costs, personnel costs, allocated overhead, licenses, professional fees and other.
Due to the inherent uncertainty in determining our ultimate cost of settling claims, we evaluate what the potential impact on consolidated results of operations, financial position, and liquidity would be based on a hypothetical 5% and 10% increase or decrease in key assumptions described above. The loss reserve range noted below represents a range of reasonably likely reserves, not a range of all possible reserves. Therefore, the ultimate losses could reach levels corresponding to reserve amounts outside of the range provided. Given our growth from inception in 2015, we believe evaluating sensitivity based on a hypothetical increase or decrease of 5% and 10% is reflective of management’s best estimate and provides an illustrative range of variability in key assumptions. The below tables present this sensitivity analysis:
For those policyholders who pay premiums on an installment basis, we charge a flat fee for each installment related to the additional administrative costs associated with processing more frequent billings. We recognize this fee income in the period which we process each installment.
Level 3 - Financial assets and liabilities for which values are based on prices or valuation techniques that require inputs that are both unobservable and significant to the overall fair value measurement.
We have operated at a loss from operations for the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019, and 2018. Therefore, the conversion of potential shares from dilutive securities would increase the denominator of the earnings (loss) per share, or EPS, calculation and would create a lower loss per share. This means that the potentially dilutive securities are considered antidilutive as they increase our EPS. Due to these losses from operations, diluted EPS would be equal to basic EPS. Earnings are allocated equally between each class of common stock because they are entitled to the same liquidation and dividend rights.
Net realized gains on investments was $0.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 and zero for years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively.
The assumptions used in the BSM option-pricing model for options granted by us in 2020 are as follows:
EPS is presented for both basic EPS and diluted EPS. We compute basic EPS by dividing net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders by the weighted-average number of shares of common stock outstanding during the period. The calculation of income (loss) available to common stockholders and EPS is based on the underlying premise that all income after payment of dividends on preferred shares is available to and will be distributed to the common stockholders. In addition to common shares outstanding, the computation of basic EPS includes instruments for which the holder has (or is deemed to have) the present rights as of the end of the reporting period to share in current period earnings (loss) with common stockholders (i.e., participating securities and common shares that are currently issuable for little or no cost to the holder). Accordingly, we include in the denominator of our basic EPS computation the weighted-average number of shares of common stock that would be issued upon the full exercise of the warrants which have an insignificant exercise price of $0.0001 per share.