It is an old saying in the insurance industry that insurance can only be sold – not bought. But it seems that insurance companies might be turning that saying upside down with the help of insurtech.
According to several key analysis firms, the insurance industry faces major disruption. McKinsey concludes online sales will increase by a factor five from 2020 to 2025, and according to KPMG’s 2019 insurtech report, 73% of insurance CEOs are prepared for radical transformation like implementing automated insurance platforms.
APRIL to open market for non-insurance specialist partners
In order to meet these sector shifts, the international insurance services group APRIL has launched an insurtech driven sales channel through a partnership with the neobank Anytime. This has come about with the help of Penni.io‘s platform solution.
– In APRIL we are strong in sales through brokers and insurance specialists, and will work more and more on online sales, especially as the trend indicates that online sales through non-insurance specialist partners will be given higher priority in the industry in the coming years, says Laurence Willems, Head of Innovation at APRIL.
Like APRIL, most major insurance companies are dependent on legacy IT and software, which can create problems when developing new online ‘plug and play’ sales channels that live up to today’s customers expectations.
– It was too resource intensive for us to do it ourselves. But Penni.io has a specialized white label platform solution that allows us to execute a faster go-to-market strategy, says Laurence Williams.
The financial sector’s digitization is pushing the insurance industry forward
Although global investment in insurtech doubled from 2017 to 2018 to $3.18 billion, it is far less than the fintech investments of $112 billion in 2018, according to FinTech Global’s database and KPMG’s latest FinTech report. But the many fintech-investments are also driving insurtech adoption, says Penni.io CEO, Jeppe Klausen.
– The banking sector is far ahead of the insurance industry on digitalization. Since the two sectors have a long tradition of working together, this is also pushing the growing demand to integrate their online sales channels with each other, says Jeppe Klausen.
Plans to expand in the European market with €2 million boost
In Penni.io’s three years existence, the company has managed to increase online sales for several large insurance companies in France, the Nordics and the UK. The company just received a €2 million investment from top Nordic insurance profiles to expand their efforts in Europe.
Niels Mortensen has a past in the top management of several Nordic insurance companies like Alka and Codan and is one of the investors. He has been impressed by the Penni.io solution.
– They impress by solving a large need for online sales and service through partners. They can connect the industry’s old IT systems to modern solutions – and they have proven that they can execute faster and use less resources than insurance companies would, says Niels Mortensen.
