Root, Inc. (ROOT)

Item 2.  Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and our audited consolidated financial statements and the related notes and the discussion under the heading “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 25, 2026, or the 2025 10-K. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Risk Factors” in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and in the 2025 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.

Our Business

Root is a technology insurance company founded on the idea that car insurance rates should be based primarily on driving behaviors, not demographics. We are revolutionizing the archaic car insurance industry by using modern technology, telematics, and data science to offer fair, personalized rates to good drivers.

We believe our competitive advantage is derived from our ability to efficiently and effectively bind auto insurance policies quickly, through direct and partnership channels, aided by segmenting individual risk to price better drivers more fairly. Our customer experience is built for ease of use and a product offering made possible with our full-stack insurance structure. These are all uniquely integrated into a single cloud-based technology platform that captures the entire insurance value chain—from customer acquisition to underwriting to claims administration and ongoing customer engagement. This unified platform enhances pricing accuracy, strengthens operating efficiency, and supports a more seamless customer experience, while creating a defensible, technology- and data-driven advantage that compounds over time.

To scale the business, we aim to drive new customer growth and optimize unit economics via our two distribution channels: direct and partnership. The direct channel efficiently drives volume from high-intent customers by reaching them where they are already shopping for insurance, such as search engines or select marketplaces they actively use. The data science model continuously seeks to optimize bidding strategies that fine-tune our prices to strike a balance between offering a competitive price and achieving target unit economics. The partnership channel provides differentiated access to high intent customers, primarily in the automotive, financial services, and independent agent sectors. We build upon or within the mobile and web customer experiences of distribution partners to reach a captive customer base with an embedded solution, which can even remove the need for the customer to ever visit a Root website to purchase and bind a policy.

We use technology to drive efficiency across the organization within distribution, underwriting, policy administration, and claims. Although we believe we are priced adequately in a majority of the states in which we operate, our technology- and data-driven approach to pricing and underwriting allows for rapid response to macroeconomic trends and competitive dynamics through quick, timely, and appropriate rate actions. We continue to release iterations of our pricing models that incorporate enhanced telematics features, new rating variables, upgraded loss models, and improved risk segmentation. These enhancements strengthen our ability to select risks more precisely and maintain pricing accuracy as conditions evolve.

Claims operations remain a critical driver of our unit economics and long-term competitiveness. We continue to invest in automation, workflow optimization, and advanced analytical tools designed to improve accuracy, speed, and consistency in claims handling. Improvements to the claim process not only support customer satisfaction but also reinforces the stability of loss ratios and improves long-term cost efficiency by reducing operating expenses.

Through continued investment in and diversification of our distribution channels, leveraging our proprietary technology and data science and focusing on partnerships with automotive, financial services, and independent agents, we believe this will position us for a sustainable, long-term and profitable path for growth.

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As a full-stack insurance company, we currently employ a “capital-efficient” model, which utilizes a variety of reinsurance structures. These include excess of loss and quota share reinsurance. Excess of loss provides us with volatility protection against a portion of large individual losses or an aggregation of losses from catastrophes. Quota share provides, among other advantages, regulatory surplus relief for growing companies. We primarily utilize reinsurance to mitigate the impact of large losses or tail events. We continuously evaluate our utilization of third-party reinsurance in order to operate a capital-efficient business model. As our gross loss ratios have stabilized, we strategically reduced the utilization of external quota share to balance the cost of reinsurance with capital efficiency. Over the long term, we expect to maintain the flexibility to modify our reinsurance program.

Recent Developments Affecting Comparability

General Macroeconomic Factors

Changing global economic conditions have led to inflationary pressures, supply chain disruptions, changes in interest rates and volatility in equity markets. In addition, economic uncertainty has risen as a result of geopolitical instability and changes in tariff policy. There remains uncertainty around the future of inflation. Elevated levels of inflation for an extended period could cause claims and claim expenses to increase, impact the performance of our investment portfolio, increase nonpayment cancellations or have other adverse effects, including variability in the competitive environment. We have also seen an increase in vehicle repair and medical costs, which are affected by inflation. These cost increases have resulted in greater claims severity. We continue to file in multiple states to establish rates that more closely follow the evolving loss cost trends. Fluctuations in interest rates could impact our cost of capital and may limit our ability to raise additional capital.

Comprehensive Reinsurance

We have significantly reduced the utilization of reinsurance through a strategic reduction of external quota share. The changes to the reinsurance program aim to deliver improved economics. Our diversified approach to reinsurance allows us to optimize capital requirements while remaining flexible in response to changes in market conditions or changes specific to our own business. We may choose to amend, commute, and/or non-renew certain third-party reinsurance arrangements in the future, which may result in us retaining more or less of our business. To the extent we retain a larger share of our book of business, our capital requirements may increase.

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Key Performance Indicators

We regularly review a number of metrics, including the following key performance indicators, to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends in our business, prepare financial projections and make strategic decisions. In addition to our financial results prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or GAAP, we believe these non-GAAP and operational measures are useful in evaluating our performance. See the section titled “—Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for additional information regarding our use of direct contribution and adjusted EBITDA and their reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

Policies in Force

We define policies in force as the number of current and active auto insurance policyholders underwritten by us as of the period end date. We view policies in force as an important metric to assess our financial performance because policy growth and retention drives our revenue growth, expands brand awareness, deepens our market penetration, and generates additional data to continue to improve the functioning of our platform.

Premiums per Policy

We define premiums per policy as the ratio of gross premiums written on auto insurance policies in force at the end of the period divided by policies in force. We view premiums per policy as an important metric since the higher the premiums per policy, the greater the amount of earned premium we expect from each policy.

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Premiums in Force

We define premiums in force as premiums per policy multiplied by policies in force multiplied by two. We view premiums in force as an estimate of annualized run rate of gross premiums written as of a given period. Since our auto policies are six-month policies, we multiply this figure by two in order to determine an annualized amount of premiums in force. We view this as an important metric because it is an indicator of the size of our portfolio of policies as well as an indicator of expected earned premium over the coming 12 months. Premiums in force is not a forecast of future revenue nor is it a reliable indicator of revenue expected to be earned in any given period. We believe that our calculation of premiums in force is useful to investors and analysts because it captures the impact of fluctuations in customers and premiums per policy at the end of each reported period, without adjusting for known or projected policy updates, cancellations and non-renewals.

Gross Premiums Written

We define gross premiums written as the total amount of gross premium on policies that were bound during the period less the prorated impact of policy cancellations

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Overview

Root is a technology insurance company founded on the idea that car insurance rates should be based primarily on driving behaviors, not demographics. We are revolutionizing the archaic car insurance industry by using modern technology, telematics, and data science to offer fair, personalized rates to good drivers.

We believe our competitive advantage is derived from our ability to efficiently and effectively bind auto insurance policies quickly, through direct and partnership channels, aided by segmenting individual risk to price better drivers more fairly. Our customer experience is built for ease of use and a product offering made possible with our full-stack insurance structure. These are all uniquely integrated into a single cloud-based technology platform that captures the entire insurance value chain—from customer acquisition to underwriting to claims administration and ongoing customer engagement. This unified platform enhances pricing accuracy, strengthens operating efficiency, and supports a more seamless customer experience, while creating a defensible, technology- and data-driven advantage that compounds over time.

To scale the business, we aim to drive new customer growth and optimize unit economics via our two distribution channels: direct and partnership. The direct channel efficiently drives volume from high-intent customers by reaching them where they are already shopping for insurance, such as search engines or select marketplaces they actively use. The data science model continuously seeks to optimize bidding strategies that fine tunes our prices to strike a balance between offering a competitive price and achieving target unit economics. The partnership channel provides differentiated access to high intent customers, primarily in the automotive, financial services, and independent agent sectors. We build upon or within the mobile and web customer experiences of distribution partners to reach a captive customer base with an embedded solution, which can even remove the need for the customer to ever visit a Root website to purchase and bind a policy.

We use technology to drive efficiency across the organization within distribution, underwriting, policy administration, and claims. Although we believe we are priced adequately in a majority of the states in which we operate, our technology- and data-driven approach to pricing and underwriting allows for rapid response to macroeconomic trends and competitive dynamics through quick, timely, and appropriate rate actions. We continue to release iterations of our pricing models that incorporate enhanced telematics features, new rating variables, upgraded loss models, and improved risk segmentation. These enhancements strengthen our ability to select risks more precisely and maintain pricing accuracy as conditions evolve.

Claims operations remain a critical driver of our unit economics and long-term competitiveness. We continue to invest in automation, workflow optimization, and advanced analytical tools designed to improve accuracy, speed, and consistency in claims handling. Improvements to the claim process not only supports customer satisfaction but also reinforces the stability of loss ratios and improves long-term cost efficiency by reducing operating expenses.

Through continued investment in and diversification of our distribution channels, leveraging our proprietary technology and data science and focusing on partnerships with automotive, financial services, and independent agents, we believe this will position us for a sustainable, long-term and profitable path for growth.

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As a full-stack insurance company, we currently employ a “capital-efficient” model, which utilizes a variety of reinsurance structures. These include excess of loss and quota share reinsurance. Excess of loss provides us with volatility protection against a portion of large individual losses or an aggregation of losses from catastrophes. Quota share provides, among other advantages, regulatory surplus relief for growing companies. We primarily utilize reinsurance to mitigate impact of large losses or tail events. We continuously evaluate our utilization of third-party reinsurance in order to operate a capital-efficient business model. As our gross loss ratios have stabilized we strategically reduced the utilization of external quota share to balance the cost of reinsurance with capital-efficiency. Over the long-term, we expect to maintain the flexibility to modify our reinsurance program.

Key Factors and Trends Affecting our Operating Performance

Our financial condition and results of operations have been, and will continue to be, affected by a number of factors, including the following:

Our Ability to Manage and Price Risk

We leverage technology to help manage risk. For instance, we leverage machine learning to “clean” behavioral data obtained through a customer’s mobile device, and we use advanced statistical methods to model data into usable behavior scores. We leverage intelligent chat functions and various forms of machine learning and advanced automation to help power our claims function. Technology is a key differentiator in managing risk across our key functions. Our success depends on our ability to adequately and competitively price risk.

Our Ability to Attract New Customers

Our long-term growth will depend, in large part, on our continued ability to attract new customers to our platform. We intend to continue to drive new customer growth by leveraging our differentiated consumer experience, our partnership channel, direct performance marketing driven by dynamic data science models, machine learning loss models and our telematics-based pricing models. Additionally, our proprietary dataset will continue to scale as we grow, enabling us to enhance our predictive models to further improve pricing and attract potential new customers. We will also continue to target attractive potential customer segments through a diverse distribution strategy, which includes direct and partnership channels. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, success of our partnership channel and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, and our ability to expand into new markets. Our ability to attract and retain customers depends on maintaining and strengthening our brand by providing superior customer experiences and competitive pricing. In particular, we are challenged by traditional insurers who have more diverse product offerings and longer established operating histories. These competitors can mimic certain aspects of our digital platform and offerings, and as they have more types of insurance products, can offer customers the ability to “bundle” multiple coverage types together, which may be attractive to many customers.

Our Ability to Retain Customers

Our ability to derive significant lifetime value from our customer relationships depends, in part, on our ability to retain our customers over time. Strong retention allows us to build a recurring revenue base, generating additional premiums term over term without material incremental marketing and underwriting costs. As we broadly retain customers and our book of business evolves to be more weighted towards renewals versus new business, as is the case with our mature competitors, we will benefit from the inherently lower loss ratios that characterize renewed premiums. Our ability to retain customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our products, offerings of our competitors and pricing of products.

Our Ability to be Licensed in All States in the United States

Our long-term growth opportunity will benefit from our ability to provide insurance across more states in the United States. Today, we are currently licensed in 50 states and the District of Columbia and operate in 36 of those states. Our state expansion has unlocked a large total addressable market for sustained growth, made our direct targeted marketing more efficient and created an opportunity to build a national brand, supporting our marketing holistically.

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Our Ability to Expand Premiums Through Cross-Selling and Fee Income Per Policy

We are in the early stages of cross-selling non-auto products across our customer base. Cross-sales of renters policies will allow us to generate additional premiums without material incremental marketing spend, and ultimately higher revenue per customer. We have also observed that bundling products with auto insurance improves retention as the relationship with our customer expands. Our success in expanding revenues through cross-sales and greater fee income per policy depends on our marketing efforts with new products, continuous state expansion of these offerings and the pricing of our bundled products and continuing to refine the fee schedules in our policyholder contracts to be more consistent with industry norms. The success of our renters insurance offering is also subject to our ability to develop underwriting capabilities to adequately price renters risk.

Recent Developments Affecting Comparability

General Macroeconomic Factors

Changing global economic conditions has resulted in inflationary pressures, supply chain disruptions, changes in interest rates and changes in equity markets. In addition, economic uncertainty has developed as a result of changes in tariff policy, including the imposition of new, increased or retaliatory tariffs. There remains uncertainty around the future of inflation, including as a result of evolving tariffs and trade policy; elevated levels of inflation for an extended period could cause claims and claim expenses to increase, impact the performance of our investment portfolio, increase nonpayment cancellations or have other adverse effects, including variability in the competitive environment. We have also seen an increase in vehicle repair and medical costs, which are affected by inflation. These cost increases have resulted in greater claims severity. Additionally, we continue to file in multiple states to establish rates that more closely follow the evolving loss cost trends. Fluctuations in interest rates could impact our cost of capital and may limit our ability to raise additional capital.

Comprehensive Reinsurance

We have significantly reduced the utilization of reinsurance through a strategic reduction of external quota share. The changes to the reinsurance program aim to deliver improved economics. Our diversified approach to reinsurance allows us to optimize capital requirements while remaining flexible in response to changes in market conditions or changes specific to our own business. We may choose to amend, commute, and/or non-renew certain third-party reinsurance arrangements in the future, which may result in us retaining more or less of our business. To the extent we retain a larger share of our book of business, our capital requirements may increase.

68

Key Performance Indicators

We regularly review a number of metrics, including the following key performance indicators, to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends in our business, prepare financial projections and make strategic decisions. In addition to our financial results prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or GAAP, we believe these non-GAAP and operational measures are useful in evaluating our performance. See the section titled “—Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for additional information regarding our use of direct contribution and adjusted EBITDA and their reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

[Excerpt truncated for page length; the complete text is on the linked full-MD&A page.]