The insurance industry has a bleak reputation – and its popularity with millennials is especially low.
Technology could provide the solution in winning over a generation which craves control over its affairs.
In the same way that challenger banks such as Revolut and Monzo are claiming younger customers by giving them tools to monitor how they spend in real-time, so Getsafe hopes to capitalise in the insurance sector.
Founded in 2015 out of a need to make insurance easier for the next generation of insurance buyers, it now serves 150,000 customers in Germany and UK.
“In the next 10 years, the generation known as millennials will purchase about one billion insurance policies in Europe alone,” CEO Christian Wiens tells BusinessCloud. “We see a lot of potential here.
“Young customers in particular are sceptical about insurance. These digital natives have no interest in complicated paperwork or long conversations with brokers and agents.
“Technology enables us to offer them a new, simple, and transparent insurance experience on their smartphones – one that is easy and fun.”
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After breaking his landlord’s vase, Wiens realised how complicated insurance was and began Getsafe with a like-minded entrepreneur he met on Facebook.
It digitises core aspects of insurance, such as documentation and claim filing, and also offers customers the opportunity to cancel their policy at any time – removing long-term contracts and reflecting the lifestyles of customers in the digital age.
“We are pursuing a self-service strategy: we enable our customers to change all details of their insurance by themselves at all times through the app,” explains Wiens. “Our chatbot is available 24/7.
“Young customers in particular aren’t interested in making the detour through an insurance broker; they want to be able to do these things by themselves and welcome our mobile offering.”
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Headquartered in Heidelberg with a satellite office in London, the majority of the firm’s 130 employees work in Germany, while it recently secured a $30 million funding round, making it one of Europe’s best funded insurance start-ups.
Wiens reveals that Getsafe is growing its team in London but that, due to the pandemic, it is working fully remotely for now.
“The British market is the biggest insurance market in Europe. Therefore, the market is very exciting to us – despite Brexit,” he says. “We wanted to take a stand by explicitly entering the British market even though Brexit is happening.
“After some initial difficulties due to COVID and the lockdown, we are now growing even faster in Great Britain than we did upon entering the German market. Launching in the UK didn’t even take four months.
“In order to provide our customers with the biggest possible security in the long term, we have additionally founded a subsidiary company based in London. This gives us the freedom to operate entirely independently of the political climate.”