"Lemonade" is the brand name for products and services provided by a group of commonly-owned companies that provide, distribute and service insurance. As used on this site, the name "Lemonade" also refers collectively to the following legal entities in the group:
Lemonade, Inc., a public benefit corporation organized under Delaware law, is the parent company in the group and it provides certain personnel, facilities and services to each subsidiary company in the group. It owns 100% of four subsidiary companies in support of its U.S. operations:
Lemonade, Inc. and Lemonade Insurance Agency, LLC each provide personnel, facilities and services to Lemonade Insurance Company. This includes the services of Lemonade, Ltd. as well as the services of third parties with whom Lemonade, Inc. or Lemonade Insurance Agency has contracted. Lemonade, Inc., Lemonade Insurance Agency and Lemonade Insurance Company hold agreements among them in which Lemonade Insurance Company pays Lemonade, Inc. for certain personnel, facilities and services at actual cost and pays Lemonade Insurance Agency, LLC a fixed percentage of Lemonade Insurance Company’s premium revenue.
The Giveback is a way for Lemonade Insurance Company to contribute money to causes its policyholders care about. The Giveback is paid only if payment is authorized by Lemonade Insurance Company’s Board of Directors consistent with their duty of care. The amount of the Giveback is based on each peer group’s total premiums and losses, after deduction of certain expenses described below.
After you purchase Lemonade insurance, we ask you to tell us which cause you would like us to support with the portion of any Giveback resulting from your policy. Policyholders who select the same cause compose one recognized peer group on the books of Lemonade Insurance Company. We will not recognize peer groups defined by causes promoting hate, violence, discrimination or similar things, and we will only donate to causes organized for any one or more of the purposes set out in Internal Revenue Code Section 50l(c), provided that no part of the Giveback will inure directly to the benefit of any private individual.
We record the total premiums paid by the members of each peer group, deduct a flat fee to pay Lemonade Insurance Agency, LLC for the expenses of running the insurance business, use some premiums to purchase reinsurance (and some unavoidable expenses), and use the remainder to pay claims. Every twelve months beginning each June 20th the total claims paid to the members of each peer group are set against the total premiums remaining to the credit of that peer group after the deductions just mentioned. Provided that the company as a whole passes the financial tests listed below, Lemonade Insurance Company will donate the funds remaining to the cause by which that peer group is defined.
As mentioned above, a big part of what we do with your premiums is to buy reinsurance. So what is reinsurance? It’s the way insurance companies hedge the risks their policyholders pay them to assume. Think of it as insurance for insurance companies. Our reinsurance program protects Lemonade Insurance Company against all kinds of losses, including large individual losses and accumulations of losses (such as would result from a hurricane). When we pay a claim under your policy, and that payment is reinsured, the reinsurance company reimburses Lemonade Insurance Company for all or part of that payment.
Although we would dearly love to guarantee the Giveback, sometimes it would not be in the best interests of our policyholders to do so. When our policyholders pay us premiums today, they are buying a promise from Lemonade Insurance Company to indemnify them in the event they suffer covered losses in the future. While you are paying a fixed price today for your policy, the future cost to Lemonade Insurance Company of its promise to you can only be estimated. Since paying your claims is job #1, the possibility that prices will prove inadequate to cover loss costs requires that insurance companies adhere to strict standards intended to ensure their future ability to pay claims. Furthermore, like all corporate directors, insurance company directors owe a legal duty of care to run the company in a financially prudent manner. As a result, Lemonade Insurance Company’s board of directors has the discretion to pay all of the Giveback, some of it, or none of it.
In other words: the Giveback is not a share of the profits of Lemonade as a whole; the Giveback is not a contractual obligation of Lemonade to you or to any cause; the Giveback is not something for which you may claim a tax deduction.
Yet it is our stated intention to donate Giveback, and our models suggest we will be able to do so most of the time.
Since our business model is based on the Giveback and since we are also committed to you to remain in sound financial condition, Lemonade Insurance Company has committed to its regulator to be constrained by four (specialized and complicated) financial tests:
These tests are intended to ensure that all or part of the Giveback will not be donated, if doing so would likely impair full and timely payment of all valid policyholder claims.