NEW BUSINSS MODELS: PARTNERSHIPS Bought By Many has scaled rapidly since focussing solely on customer-driven pet insurance, developing its own model of MGA. In the year it broke into the unicorn club, Chief Financial Officer Luisa Barile says it wouldn’t have been possible without its partners Dogs naturally run in packs and, according to one pet insurer, so should insurance companies. Bought By Many’s enthusiasm for partnership working is understandable. Originally established as an insurtech offering niche cover in a broad range of circumstances, its business took off
when it paired up with Munich Re Digital Partners to focus exclusively on developing customer-centric pet insurance. It’s also a case study in how alpha players and whippersnapper startups can come together to reshape an industry by creating business models that support the UK’s ambition to unleash a new generation of financial services. There is, of course, already a long history of collaboration in an industry that is predicated on a network of operators that all need each other to bring a product to market: reinsurer, underwriter and broker, with, more recently, specialist managing general agents (MGAs), acting on behalf of one insurer, and price comparison websites (PCWs) added to the mix.
With digitisation comes another motivation for players of every breed and size to collaborate, this time by working closely with a new generation of data aggregators and technology providers. Overcoming the cultural differences between them, though, is no walk in the park. To help address that, insurance firms have been invited to sign the government-backed Fintech Pledge, setting out a voluntary framework in which such partnerships can flourish and, in April, six major players did – including Munich Re Digital Partners. The Pledge seeks to manage expectation, avoid exploitation and maximise benefits for both sides. And, for Luisa Barile, chief financial officer of Bought By Many, signing it is necessary to allow the insurance industry to modernise.
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TheInsurtechMagazine | Issue 6
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