How many people have stuck with the same auto insurance provider because the process of finding a new one feels overwhelming and painful?

A lot.

It’s no surprise then that a number of startups have emerged over the years to help consumers tackle this challenge in one way or another, including The Zebra and Jerry. The latest company to gain traction in the space, and raise venture dollars, is Trellis.

Trellis says it has built an API platform that lets consumers shop for car insurance policies by offering side-by-side comparisons, a way to buy a new plan and cancel their old plan -- all at once. What separates Trellis from many others in the space is that it also partners with digital banks, fintechs and financial institutions so those organizations can offer the insurance options to their customers. And now one of those financial institutions, Amex Ventures, has poured $5 million into the company in an effort to help it continue to grow.

“We are not a brand that most consumers have heard of, and we intend for it to stay that way,” said CEO and founder Daniel Demetri. By partnering with existing financial services platforms such as Acorns, Truebill and Albert, Trellis aims to help businesses that have an audience that are already engaged, and that they are having financial conversations with, help bring insurance into the conversation.

“As we think about broadening the reach of our platform, there's a lot of cool opportunities for us to explore doing that with American Express,” he said. “Expanding our relationship with large financial institutions is our core focus.”

Before he founded Trellis in 2019, Demetri worked at banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan, as well as tech companies like Google, Kayak and Earnest.

The concept for Trellis, he said, was based on the idea that car insurance and homeowners' insurance “are super confusing for consumers and unnecessarily disjointed from the rest of our financial lives.”

Trellis offers a suite of technologies packaged as “Savvy” that, in a nutshell, help consumers make better insurance decisions and tie those decisions into platforms they’re already using “to make it more convenient and accessible,” according to Demetri.