Creandum backs yulife

InsureTech" - This is how most of us in the world of startups refers to the digital transformation sweeping over the $5T USD insurance industry. For obvious reasons, massive digitization of an industry of that size has attracted plenty of venture dollars in the past couple of years, and at Creandum with our broad experience from fintech (iZettle, Klarna, Pleo, Billie, Tide, and more) we've naturally also been paying attention.

The 4 Opportunities of InsureTech

By speaking to a wide array of startups and incumbents, as well as researching the industry, with crucial aid from Bjarke Staun-Olsen and Valter Roldao, we identified 4 major pains points and areas of innovation within the insurance industry where we believe significant value will be created:

• Distribution/marketing - With digital-first distribution companies are able to reduce discovery cost, improve onboarding experience, and remove market intermediaries.

• Pricing/underwriting - By accessing new sources and better modeling of data, insurance companies can perform more precise underwriting and offer more competitive and transparent pricing.

• Product - New risks means new insurance product offering, e.g. cyber insurance and gig economy workforce coverage.

• Claims/operations - Take some of the many manual and cumbersome processes in the industry and slap on selected AI frameworks to reap the efficiency rewards from automation.

On the basis on above, we scanned Europe in search of finding the most compelling team and idea going after this market and solving some of these pains, and we eventually met with yulife and fell in love. Today we're pumped, excited, and honored to announce that...

Creandum IV is leading a £10m Series A into the company!

yulife provides group life coverage, which in short means life insurance offered by employers to its employees. This is a massive market estimated to ≈$80B worth of group life premiums per year, which has experienced little to none innovation in the past decade. In addition to offering phenomenal insurance coverage, yulife comes with a companion app where its users in a fun and engaging way, are encouraged and supported to live the happiest and longest life possible.

By rewarding users for a healthy lifestyle, e.g. number of steps taken and mindfulness minutes completed, they earn yucoins which are redeemable with partners like Amazon and Asos.

Mission-Driven Insurance Innovation x 3.

So why yulife of all InsureTech companies out there? First and foremost, Creandum is in the business of backing amazing and capable individuals, and the team behind yulife is an incredibly strong and complementary group of individuals. They not only bring deep insurance industry experience, which is required to carefully navigate this regulated space but combining this with digital consumer internet DNA to build an engaging app experience. More importantly though, outside of relevant experiences, Sammy, Sam, Josh, Jonathan, and Jaco really care about the mission they are pursuing. This is a mission which entails building an insurance company with a real which truly serves the best interest of its customers - provide financial security and live your fullest life. They are the perfect combination of a mission-driven team pursuing a massive commercial opportunity.

In addition to this amazing team, 3 main things get us excited about yulife:

Digital DNA.

By offering group life insurance with a mobile digital-first experience, yulife can provide a self-service experience - something which traditionally has been a manual process involving physical paperwork. This distribution opens up new parts of the market to service smaller clients who otherwise haven't been able to procure group life insurance since incumbents due to their manual and high cost of onboarding have been focusing on larger accounts. yulife rather has the agility to move between SMEs and large enterprise accounts, and thereby access a wider array of the market than others previously have.

Insurance engagement.

Most insurance products have very low to none engagement. Customers sign up, and then ignore their insurance until the next time they get billed or alternatively if they have a claim to make. With yulife, by offering insurance combined with a digital companion app, they are building an authentic and high-engagement relationship directly with their policyholders. yulife redefines what an insurance "product" and "experience" really means and thereby is building the most frequent, meaningful, and positive relationship in the world between an insurance company and its policyholders. Being close to your customers has obvious benefits of prolonging lifetime value, and gives us reason to believe yulife is uniquely positioned to be the trusted partner for insurance-related services starting with life and beyond over time.

Underwriting moonshot.

Finally, the huge disruptor and potential of yulife is about redefining insurance underwriting. Most insurance products are based on pricing the insurance with upfront available data. The holy grail within the industry is being able to cost-effectively allow for continuous underwriting, where you constantly learn more about your policyholders and adjust the risk profile accordingly. yulife's model allows for better data, which means they more accurately can price their risk, meaning they can offer prices more cost-effectively than others - a win-win for everyone.

We couldn't be more excited for Creandum IV to be part of yulife's journey of revolutionalizing the insurance industry by adding a into it. If you want your employees to have the appropriate benefits of 2019 and onwards, or if you want to join a massive mission-driven InsureTech opportunity, head on over to yulife for more deets.