LIFE & HEALTH INSURANCE: LIFE The minnow scores: Insurtech Vlot takes a different approach
Net Vlot CEO Michael Dritsas describes how it got off the bench and onto the pitch with the life insurance premier leaguers ‘We are the Leicester City of the life insurance market’ might seem a novel way to open the discussion about the services Swiss-grown B2B2C company Vlot provides. But even for non-football fans, the unfancied and very unexpected minnow-champions of the 2015/16 Premier League season provide a useful illustration. Like The Foxes, Vlot sees itself as a disruptor, outside of the hegemony of legacy life insurers (or established soccer powerhouses), challenging the accepted norms to put the consumer front and centre. Vlot’s CEO Michael Dritsas, a man as gifted with descriptors as Leicester’s erstwhile coach Claudio Ranieri, fleshes out the analogy: “The current situation in elite football is a great comparison to life insurance,” he says. “You have, let’s say, in Europe, the top 10 teams which are just behemoths. They are running a model that has been the same www.fintech.finance
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for ages, just like the major players in insurance. In football it’s TV money, in life insurance, it’s established, stable revenue streams. With the latter, in essence, it’s a simple product; you die, you get money (in the case of term life assurance). So, with such legacy platforms, where is the incentive to innovate – why change something you don’t think is broken? This might be a controversial view, but I simply don’t see much innovation in the industry. “Innovation comes from the willingness to look at things afresh and small fry like ourselves (or Leicester City, if you like) are best-placed to bring the change customers increasingly expect. And, again like Leicester City, we brought together talented people who are not afraid to go against the grain.”
In football it’s TV money, in life insurance it’s established, stable revenue streams. With the latter, in essence, it’s a simple product… Where is the incentive to innovate?
In essence, Vlot – founded in 2017 – allows customers to access a much more nimble model that looks at their existing household income and compares this to what they would receive in the event of death, significant injury or retirement. It calculates if there is any shortfall in an individual’s financial provision and gives an honest analysis of whether additional cover is required – or not – by looking at someone’s personal circumstances, which may change for good or bad over time. Vlot’s embedded interface, a ‘financial wellbeing tool’, operates within the existing systems of its partners – receptive insurers, pension funds, banks, mortgage brokers, companies that offer life insurance as an employee benefit – and offers a customer experience that is easy, reliable and flexible. Dritsas says: “In the choice-driven world of Netflix and Amazon, consumers are telling us what customer experience they want. They want to be able to flip out their phone, put in their social security number, and it tell them ‘this is your current retirement pot. If you want to get in touch with a provider, click OK and your data will be transferred to ones that will analyse your situation, and you can then do X, Y or Z. Issue 6 | TheInsurtechMagazine
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