InsurTech hypergrowth
Unicorn triumvirate backed Pasarpolis raises $54M! And, more news from India!
Hey folks! I made ‘InsurTech Tribe’ known to my connections on LinkedIn last week - so welcome to the ~ 75 of you who signed up since the previous installment. I’d like to start today’s piece by looking at Pasarpolis (Indonesia):
“Hypergrowth is our jam” - Pasarpolis in 2019
Pasarpolis caught my eyes in August 2018 [1] when it announced its Series A which saw participation from Indonesia’s unicorn triumvirate: Go-Jek (mobility), Traveloka (travel) and Tokopedia (e-commerce).
What does Pasarpolis do? A combination of D2C and B2B2C insurance business. On the D2C front, it acts as a web aggregator to help customers buy insurance. On the B2B2C front, it works with channel partners like Go-Jek to insure their (contract) staff.
For a company founded in 2015, in 3 years, it had reached ~ 500,000 policyholders out of whom 300,000 were Go-Jek driver partners under the Go-Proteksi product (launched only a year prior)…. If this number is shocking…
For 2019, Pasarpolis reported issuance of 650M policies via its channel partners to gig workers, delivery executives and drivers - and 4M unique policyholders were on-boarded in June 2020 [2]
Per Pasarpolis, their monthly policies has grown x80 its August ‘18 figures, my napkin mathematics suggests that Pasarpolis has at least ~ 30M unique customers in Indonesia (*1/8th of its population*).
There are a few points to unpack here
‘Land & expand’ with channel partners - since August ‘18, their # of channel partners has grown x4 but their monthly policies sold has grown x80.
This would be the 2nd largest InsurTech raise in SE Asia yet after SingLife’s $90m Series C in July ‘19 [3]
Real technology leverage - Pasarpolis helps support one-click claims; invariably many SE Asian startups use human effort to process claims - based on Pasarpolis’ employee base growth - it seems they’ve been able to scale to x80 monthly volume by *only* doubling their staff..
PS - Pasarpolis has a small (~10) person Tech team in India which appears to be actively hiring - the ‘offshoring’ of the engineering function to India seems a feature of Indonesian rocketships - most noticeable is Go-Jek’s engineering & product team in India!
Let’s take a small break to switch gears from Indonesia to India.. and, if you haven’t already, please do consider subscribing if you found this interesting/informative:
Regulatory (arbitrage)? 🇮🇳
As many of you know, I keenly follow India’s insurance regulator (IRDAI) for the reforms it has been pushing out. I covered previous reforms in my Q1 FY 21 update here.
This week, the IRDAI came out with two announcements:
a. Wearables & Wellness benefits in Health Insurance [4]
Last week, I wrote about Amazon’s Halo offering and its partnership with Vitality Insurance in USA. It seems wearables & wellness are back to being ‘top-of-mind’..
Earlier this year, the IRDAI InsurTech sandbox permitted trials of wearable-linked health insurance - GOQii seems to be the leader since it the partner to all 5 insurance companies in the sandbox for this product offering..
On 04.09, the IRDAI clarified some points regarding wellness benefits in the context of health insurance [5]
The summary, for folks looking to design in this space, is:
Discounts on premiums & complementary increases in Sum Assured can be offered for meeting certain criteria.
Discounts on gym, yoga and class membership schemes can be provided (this might be big for players like CureFit).
Products with wellness benefits need to be filed separately together with the wellness benefits schedule (to ensure non-discrimination).
Overall, it is very exciting to see wearables & wellness coming into the Health insurance fold in India - Tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google (via Fitbit) would be lining up in the wings but GOQii seems to have the lead right now!
b. Working group study into Index-linked Life Insurance products [6]
Quick heads up - certain ‘life insurance’ products - ULIPs (Unit Linked Insurance Plans) double up as savings instruments as there is a ‘survival benefit’ (i.e. payment even if you don’t pass away during the policy term!)
Expanding the investment horizon for ULIP funds can open up thematic, ESG or other sectoral focused investment focused savings-cum-insurance products. This could be an exciting space!
Certainly ULIPs have also outperformed active fund management strategies in recent years. Combined with ESG tailwinds and the tax benefits on ULIPs [7], I would encourage you to keep your eyes out for more action here!
That’s all from me this week. I look forward to your thoughts, comments & feedback. If you found this piece useful, please do share it forward:
If you’re still here, you’re a legend - last week marked 2 years of me writing about InsurTech - I put down some of my thoughts on how writing has helped turbo charge my career, please feel free to give it a read!