Another insurance-payments partnership dropped this week.
One Inc and ManageMy announced they’re joining forces to handle digital payments for insurance carriers—premiums in, claims out, all through fancy new channels like digital wallets and instant transfers. It sounds great on a press release. But let me be honest: I’ve covered enough of these “transformative partnerships” to know the real question nobody’s asking.
Who is actually making money?
Look, the pitch is solid enough on the surface. One Inc brings ClaimsPay and PremiumPay, its insurance-focused payment networks. ManageMy brings customer-facing software that runs the claims and sales experience for carriers. Put them together, and theoretically, insurers get a smoothly digital payment experience without stitching together five different vendors. Makes sense.
But here’s where I get cynical—and I’m usually right about this.
The Real Problem Nobody’s Solving
Insurance carriers have had the ability to process digital payments for years. That’s not new. What they actually lack is the incentive. And a partnership can’t create that.
The insurance industry moves slower than continental drift, and not because the technology doesn’t exist. It’s because incumbents are fat on float—the interest they earn while holding customer money before paying claims. Digital, instant payments? That’s a feature for customers, not for carriers’ CFOs. Every day a claim sits in escrow is a day the insurer’s cash earns interest.
“Faster payments drive customer satisfaction more than any other factor, while slow payments cost insurers goodwill, renewals and retention,” One Inc claimed in their own research.
That’s true. But it’s also not news. And it assumes carriers actually prioritize retention over float optimization. They don’t—not universally.
ManageMy’s Chief Revenue Officer Stuart Johnston said something in the release that made me smirk: “Because payments are the most frequent touchpoint for policyholders, the payment experience can make the difference between retaining or losing a customer.” Sure. But only if the customer has options. In most insurance markets, they don’t.
Why This Timing Feels Convenient
One Inc’s CEO Ian Drysdale threw an interesting observation into a PYMNTS report: insurance went from check-printing to “digitally driven” starting in 2020 when offices shut down. That’s fair. Post-pandemic, remote work meant check printers weren’t available. So carriers moved to digital by necessity, not innovation.
But—and this is important—they moved slowly. Most insurers still have clunky, fragmented payment systems. They’ve bolted on digital channels without rethinking the underlying architecture. That’s where One Inc sees an opening: carriers want to look modern without actually modernizing.
Here’s the thing: a partnership announcement doesn’t change the physics of insurance economics. It just packages existing capabilities with better PR.
The Real Winner: Fintech’s Narrative Machine
Don’t get me wrong. One Inc and ManageMy are both legitimate companies doing solid work. One Inc has real insurance expertise—handling multi-party transactions (lienholder payments, mortgagee payments) is genuinely complex, and that’s harder to fake.
But this partnership feels more like mutual credibility-building than groundbreaking integration. ManageMy gets to tell customers, “We now have best-in-class payments integrated.” One Inc gets carrier distribution through ManageMy’s installed base without building a full customer-acquisition machine.
That’s smart business. It’s just not new business.
The real question—the one that would actually tell you if this matters—is adoption rates. How many ManageMy customers will flip the switch and use One Inc’s payment network? Will they do it because they genuinely believe it improves customer retention, or because it reduces operational friction? Because those are different answers.
One Inc’s claim that “the insurance industry has evolved from traditional paper-based processes to a digitally driven ecosystem” over five years sounds right until you actually call an insurer and ask how long it takes to process a claim. Then you realize most of that “digital ecosystem” is still spreadsheets under the hood with a nice mobile app on top.
What’s Actually Happening Here
This partnership is a win for both companies’ market positioning, and it’s probably a slight efficiency win for carriers who adopt it. But it’s not a sea change. It’s an incremental move in a market that’s been incrementally moving toward digital payments for a decade.
The insurance industry doesn’t have a payment technology problem. It has a business model problem. And no partnership, no matter how well-engineered, can fix that.
If you’re an insurance carrier evaluating this, ask One Inc the hard question: will your network actually give me a competitive edge, or will it just cost me less to operate what I’m already doing? Because those are the only two outcomes that matter.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What does One Inc’s payment network actually do for insurance companies?
One Inc’s ClaimsPay and PremiumPay platforms let insurers accept premium payments and disburse claims through digital wallets, instant transfers, and virtual cards. The platform handles multi-party transactions (like payments to lienholders or mortgagees) that regular payment networks can’t manage. But most carriers already can do this through multiple vendors—One Inc just consolidates it.
Will this partnership make insurance claims faster?
It could, but only if carriers actually deploy it and prioritize speed. The technology enables faster payments, but carriers’ incentive structures don’t always reward speed. Many insurers benefit from holding money longer (float). So this is available capability, not guaranteed outcome.
Why should I care if I’m just a customer?
If you have a claim pending, faster digital payment processing could mean you get your money days sooner instead of weeks. In practice, adoption will be uneven across carriers. Check your insurer’s actual payment terms, not press releases.
