Yeah I imagine Turo is exploding. When I traveled this summer my options for a 5 day rental were $2,200 from all the rental car companies, or $375 from Turo.
How do they deal with insurance? I'm not sure I'd feel very comfortable trusting a random stranger to use my car for 5 days, unless I was sure I'd be paid out in full (or more) if they were to damage or total the vehicle.
Most companies like Airbnb, Turo, Boatsetter (airbnb for boats) offer some insurance they negotiate with an underwriter like Geico. Getting this sort of insurance individually is much more costly or next to impossible, which is why we don't see people short-term renting expensive assets to each other on Craigslist. I imagine negotiating the ability to dole out these sorts of policies at scale with Lloyd's of London or GEICO is fairly arduous, but it seems like one of more key pieces for these companies to successfully get off the ground to me.
Lloyds et al wants to do business. They are super easy to deal with. Far easier to talk to someone at Lloyds than any major tech company. Only Google would be audacious enough not to let someone spending $100k / month not talk to a human / ban them without warning / send canned email responses to business inquiries at scale.
Check their website, they have this crazy idea where you put in the country where you are and then they give you a list of people to call so you can do business with them. The even crazier thing is the people who pick up the phone aren't humanized robots, but are incredibly intelligent and talented people who want your business and will create tailored plans to suit your needs.
If I want to talk to their President all I have to do is call him.
The reason you don't see people renting expensive assets to each other on Craigslist is because the nonmonetary transaction costs are too high. When someone wants to rent a car, they're looking to straightforwardly solve their problem in a predictable manner. They don't want to sift through different Craigslist ads looking for one that meets their requirements, emailing to see if it's available, figuring out if the rental is legitimate, etc.
On the lessor's side, since the primary market prefers bona fide businesses you're left with the customers who cannot rent from the primary market. Meaning you're much more likely to end up on the receiving end of abuse (outright theft, vandalism, being an accessory to a crime), or at the very least problematic customers ("I know I rented it for one day but I have to pick up my kids tomorrow so I'll return it Thursday"). A business can absorb such variance, or at least create the illusion of doing so, whereas for an individual such events present a major hassle.
You can bundle all of that transactional risk up into a kind of insurance, but that only works if you're large enough that the insurance company can verify that you're not defrauding them.
Insurers can spread their risk along multiple insurance lines.
If you're Airbnb, you're exposed to one type of risk: houses getting damaged. If you're Lloyds/GEICO, you're spread out over health risks, housing risk, car risk, maybe some financial assets risk etc
Could you clarify what you mean here? I'm not sure I follow.
Say someone rents an AirBNB and absolutely trash the house, racking up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of damages. Or steals valuables that are in the house. Or on the flipside, perhaps the property has not been repaired and the Airbnb renter is injured on the property. Surely AirBNB would require insurance for such types of incidents.
Why would they not require insurance when they are in the business of rentals? Most jurisdictions would allow a property owner to include AirBNB in a lawsuit against a renter conducting criminal activity or a renter suffering damages from criminal negligence of the property owner.
To limit your downside. What AirBnB likely has is a high deductible policy. AirBNB pays for minor damages, but if the world goes on a AirBnB party rental spree Lloyds pays.
* http://www.turo.com