The ultimate side hustler

Determined disruptor: Naby Mariyam

How a failed claim led Naby Mariyam to create ‘cool, rebellious’ insurtech Hustle for people in the gig economy

By Miranda Maxwell

Growing up in the Indian Ocean nation of Maldives and achieving certification at Le Cordon Bleu isn’t an obvious path to founding an insurance business. But that’s exactly what Naby Mariyam did when she created Sydney-based Coverhero.

The insurtech’s inaugural Hustle income protection product is designed to meet the needs of a growing casualised workforce, targeting “dreamers, influencers, entrepreneurs, Airbnb hosts, gig workers, business owners and Uber drivers”.

Although it’s very early days, Coverhero’s effervescent boss is serious about capturing the income cover niche with Hustle, and ranks 99th on the Insurtech 100 list compiled by market intelligence platform Sonr.

As an enthusiastic and high-profile participant in the local insurtech scene, Ms Mariyam is Coverhero’s most valuable asset, building awareness of the company, its products and her aspirations to make a big difference.

Her company is an authorised representative of Sydney-based financial services advisory firm Enva Australia, and is underwritten by underwriting agency Agile Insurance.

As the brand name indicates, Coverhero isn’t aimed at the conservative side of town. Comparing itself with traditional insurers, its website says “the majority of [their] tech is like them, super-old”, and that insurers’ efforts to change “is like trying to turn the Titanic” while “we are on jet-skis”.

“We position it as kind of a rebellious, cool brand,” Ms Mariyam told Insurance News. “On the outside we are super-edgy, but inside we still have to follow all of the regulatory and compliance requirements for Australia, always balancing between being funky and super-diligent at the same time.”

The “contingent workforce” Hustle targets is estimated to make up almost half the working population by 2025, and the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exposed the vulnerability of this sector.

“We didn’t even understand the magnitude of what we were doing until COVID happened,” Ms Mariyam says. “We thought of something before it became a thing.”

This is a woman who sees an opportunity and does something about it.

She has worked in food, travel, academia, consulting and “everything in between”. A social scientist by profession, she moved to Australia at the age of 23 with a six-month-old baby on a scholarship to study French cuisine, working in upmarket Sydney restaurants before starting a PhD investigating what motivates choice in food tourism.

“I am the ultimate side hustler,” she says. “I never just had one job; I always had two or three jobs, consulting, studying at uni and also working.”

Other ventures in her varied career include a travel documentary series, launching Australia’s first rideshare platform for kids in 2015, and a short stint at the United Nations Development Project working on start-up innovation.

So was her move into insurance just another of those sudden changes of direction? Alas, no. Ms Mariyam says her motivation was personal after a “terrible, traumatic” claim experience.

Three years ago she planned an extravagant world trip with her boyfriend but they were forced to cancel “at great cost” when he was diagnosed with cancer.

“He survived, we lost a lot of money, we broke up, I lost my job and I was very angry with the insurance industry.”

Her regret at not having suitable insurance cover – “if I had only read what I was buying, all of the ifs and buts”– propelled her to devise Hustle to provide a safety net for the self-employed.

“I was building something for myself really, because I was that hurt. Thanks to my naivete, I went headfirst into building a start-up to solve all of the problems of the insurance industry.”

So far she hasn’t, but her understanding has grown from finding the industry “so backward” in technical innovation to an appreciation of it as “an incredible industry that provides a great value to [the] community”.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around why it is so complex. I am a social scientist, so I understand it from a consumer perspective, but I did not understand the industry’s challenges.”

Building community: Ms Mariyam says money is not the only motivator

Ms Mariyam says she spent time in Germany and New York talking with major insurers and other experts during Coverhero’s development phase, learning about the value chain from a reinsurance perspective, underwriting, distribution, claims and so on in what she says was like a “fast track MBA”.

“This was a huge learning journey that I really enjoyed, and I also built a lot of appreciation for the industry that I did not have before. We have such a huge role to play in building things that are relevant for our generation.”

Coverhero’s point of difference is building a “community”, helped by advocates and brand ambassadors and collaborations with like-minded companies that target the same user base.

Historically the insurance industry’s interactions with these “communities” have been mostly ticking a box rather than an enhanced experience, Ms Mariyam says. She mentions airline rewards or gift vouchers or discounts to counter “this thinking of money or cheaper premiums as the only reward”.

As for Coverhero, “we have a cult-like following,” she says. “People love our products because of what we stand for and because we are not from the industry and they trust us more.”

She says not all market segments just want a cheaper product, so her business focuses on understanding the key drivers for key segments and being able to meet them at the point of their need – “remembering that insurance is a service rather than a product”.

“If you cannot create touch points to connect, and the only interaction you have with your customers is buying and claiming, that is not a service industry.”

She says Coverhero and Hustle use “much broader thinking that we can do in terms of engaging. That comes from in-depth understanding of human behaviour and what drives choice and motivations for individuals. Money is not the only motivation.

“Engineers and actuaries do not have the lens that I bring to the table. I spent years studying human behaviour, culture and society, and that is really valuable for insurance.”

Coverhero has several other “stealth mode” products in the pipeline, with one contender expected to launch in the second quarter of next year. The company is now looking to raise $5 million to fund its next phase of expansion with a portfolio of products serving the self-employed and gig worker markets.

Ms Mariyam sees a “disturbing” gender imbalance in the industry, saying she has spoken with up to 400 insurance executives over the past eight years, and less than 20 were women. The industry needs to address this, she says.

She says she encountered “a lot of pushback” in setting up her company, but relied on her “very competitive” nature and self-belief.

“Being misunderstood is something that I have learned to live with, but every now and then you will find one or two people who just get it. They become champions, they become supporters, they become investors. That is the nature of innovation.”

Had she heeded all the advice she received from executives, investors and venture capital firms, “I wouldn’t have a business today”.

“If you’re doing something radically different, most people won’t understand it. You just have to continue with your own self-belief and keep going forward.”

insuranceNEWS October/November 2020