For decades, the insurance industry has been defined by caution, paperwork, and delay. From claim checks that take weeks to arrive to billing systems that make agents pull their hair out, one of America's most essential industries has also been one of its slowest to innovate.
But that's beginning to change.
Enter Cody Eddings, co-founder and CEO of SnapRefund, a Philadelphia-based FinTech–InsurTech hybrid that's tackling one of the least glamorous—but most critical—challenges in the insurance world: payments.
From simplifying agency billing to helping insurers pay claims in minutes instead of weeks, SnapRefund is quietly reshaping how money moves through the entire insurance ecosystem. And in doing so, it's helping rebuild trust between carriers, brokers, and consumers.
The idea for SnapRefund didn't begin in insurance at all. In 2019, Eddings and co-founder Anis Taylor set out to build a peer-to-peer payment app focused on improving financial literacy in underserved communities.
They envisioned an app that rewarded users for learning about personal finance—earning tokens that could be redeemed for high-value resale items like PlayStations, sneakers, or tech gadgets. The goal was social impact: empowering people to make smarter financial choices through interactive learning.
But the reality of building a payments app from scratch soon hit hard. Competing with giants like Venmo, PayPal, and Zelle proved impossible without massive banking access and scale.
"We realized quickly that while the mission was great, the business model wasn't sustainable," Eddings told Insurance Hour's host Karl Susman. "We were paying dozens of cents per transaction while the big players were paying fractions of a cent."
That realization forced a pivot—a hallmark of every resilient startup story.
While exploring other use cases for their instant payment technology, Eddings and Taylor noticed something startling: despite advances in digital finance, nearly 70% of all insurance claims in the U.S. were still paid by paper check.
Think about that. In a world where consumers can send money instantly between smartphones, an insurance company—handling some of life's most urgent financial events—was still printing, mailing, and waiting for checks to clear.
"When someone needs money for a claim payment," Eddings said, "that's a really sensitive time. They might be displaced from their home. They might not h ...
