Good morning! Mira Murati shares her new AI startup, Argentina's ‘feminist’ former president charged with spousal abuse, and IVF gets its own insurance.
- Fertility innovation. New technologies are improving fertility treatments every day—from IVF and egg-freezing to AI advancements and male infertility companies. What hasn't improved is just how expensive it can be in the U.S. to access these treatments.
Future Family over the past decade has offered fertility financing, or loans for people undergoing IVF or freezing their eggs—extending $200 million in credit in total. Today, Fortune is the first to report, the startup is launching an IVF insurance product.
People undergoing IVF in the U.S. will be able to purchase an insurance plan that, for a price of 20% of their total treatment cost, insures them through two cycles of IVF. If they don't achieve a live birth after two cycles, they can file a claim and get their money back. They won't be able to buy a second insurance plan, but can use those returned tens of thousands of dollars to try a third time. For $40,000 in IVF costs, a plan would cost about $8,000.
Future Family CEO Claire Tomkins says she has "agonized" over the past several years about the risks families take when pursuing IVF. "It is very emotional and draining. It's a financial event. You just potentially lost $20,000 or $40,000 or more," she says. Tomkins knew those feelings intimately—she went through six IVF cycles to conceive the first of her three children and says she spent at least $100,000.
Yet the CEO faced the challenge of convincing the conservative insurance industry to underwrite fertility treatments. While she says brokers at Lloyd's of London initially thought the idea was "crazy," medical advancements over the past 15 years made it possible. For patients under 35, IVF success rates are now close to 50%, thanks to improvements in fast freeze technology, multiple transfers, and embryology labs. Those numbers keep improving—so Future Family sold underwriters on a "forward risk curve."
"We use auto insurance. We use health care insurance. We use homeowners' insurance. We have many forms of insurance that we all buy," Tomkins says. "This is meant to be as simple as the concept of trip insurance."
Reducing IVF costs is a popular idea—President Donald Trump yesterday signed an executive order that ordered policy recommendations on increasing access and reducing costs to the treatment (although GOP politicians in the past have threatened the availability of IVF).
Another U.K.-founded startup, Gaia, has started to offer fertility insurance, but Tomkins argues that Future Family's is unique for its nationwide availability and a lower-cost risk-based model. Future Family's product, however, faces limitations too; patients older than 38 aren't eligible for insurance plans using their own eggs.
She says that doctors and families alike appreciate IVF insurance. For providers, telling a patient their only option is to spend their life savings with no guarantees has never been an appealing part of the job.
"We can have this conversation now," Tomkins says, "and it's not as scary as it used to be."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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