Claire Tomkins holds a PhD in applied economics and finance from Stanford University and built a career in consumer finance before she "caught the entrepreneurial bug." The catalyst for founding her own company? A personal life experience shared by many Americans: undergoing in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
Image Credit: Gina Risso. Future Family founder and CEO Claire Tomkins.
Today, Tomkins is a mother to three children conceived with IVF. She's also the founder and CEO of Future Family, a San Francisco-based startup offering payment plans and insurance coverage to help people finance their fertility treatments.
Related: These Co-Founders Let Women Freeze Their Eggs for Free — Cracking Open the 'Inaccessible' Industry. Their Cutting-Edge Model Solves Another Major Fertility Issue Too.
It might come as no surprise that fertility treatments like IVF can take a physical and mental toll on those who use them, but the steep financial cost is another factor prospective patients have to consider. Costs for a single cycle have been estimated to range from $15,000 to $20,000 but can exceed $30,000, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
"We clearly needed a financial product for family building for IVF."
" You typically don't just buy your house in cash," Tomkins tells Entrepreneur. "You don't typically buy your car in cash, or your education loan. So we clearly needed a financial product for family building for IVF."
Future Family offers both an IVF payment plan, which starts at $300 per month and covers clinic procedures, lab work, medications and more, and an egg freezing payment plan, which starts at $150 per month and encompasses all of the above, plus storage.
In February, the company rolled out its insurance product, Orange Shield, with three refund levels: $15,000 for a single cycle, $30,000 for two cycles and $50,000 for two cycles with medication coverage. The average cost of protection is $3,000 down and $999 per month for five months.
Related: COVID-19 Is Changing How Women Think About Their Fertility
"Let's try and address the financial rollercoaster so you can focus on your own emotional journey."
All of Future Family's insurance plans come with a "Baby or Your Money Back" guarantee, which is exactly what it sounds like: If the patient's IVF cycle is unsuccessful after two cycles, they can make an insurance claim and get their money back.
"[IVF is] this emotional and financial rollercoaster," Tomkins says. "Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work the first time. We're stepping in to say, 'Okay, let's try and address the financial rollercoaster so you can focus on your own emotional journey and your care while you're a patient.'"
Although Tomkins had identified a clear gap for Future Family's insurance product, "a lot of people in the insurance industry felt we were kind of crazy to say we can insure IVF," she admits. However, Tomkins explains that IVF success rates have improved to such an extent that underwriting the risk is possible — so the company built an actuarial model to do just that.
Next came the technical challenge, Tomkins recalls: What type of insurance would it be? Future Family had to determine the specifics of its policy and structure. "[We built a] multi-disbursement product [in fertility financing]," Tomkins says. "We pay the clinic; we pay the pharmacy. We can handle multiple payments on behalf of the patients."
The last step in the product development process, which took 18 months in total, was finalizing the reinsurance capacity, Tomkins explains: "That means a multi-billion-dollar firm says that they have read your documents, they've seen your actuarial model, and they want to provide capital."
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" I'm very excited to see that we're having more national conversations around IVF."
Since its 2016 launch, Future Family says it has extended more than $200 million in credit and served over 10,000 patients. To date, Future Family has raised $48 million in venture capital. The company also announced April 3 that it has secured a $400 million financing program from Clear Haven Capital Management to expand its lending platform.
" I'm very excited to see that we're having more national conversations around IVF and that we're accepting that this is a very mainstream way to build your family," Tomkins says. "It's going to be companies like ours as well as [additional] support, whether at the federal policy level, state level, through employers, [that ensure] everyone has access to easy, affordable fertility care."
This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.
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