ITI: Why is now an exciting time to be a rising insurtech?
Sammy: Insurtech is flying high right now and investor interest is reaching record levels. In the second quarter of 2021, insurtech companies brought in a record $4.5bn across 160 deals, and YuLife recently raised a $70m Series B in one of Europe’s largest insurtech funding rounds in life insurance.
The Covid-19 pandemic prompted people to reappraise their priorities, and guaranteeing long-term financial security for themselves and their families grew in importance. Yet financial products have been typically perceived as adversarial, complex, and not user-friendly, creating a gap in the market for innovative insurtechs to tap into people’s genuine desire to improve their financial wellbeing, while also being accessible for 21st century consumers. In the workplace, there’s now a growing expectation that employers safeguard their employees’ wellbeing, so products like group life protection have grown exponentially in value – exactly where YuLife and other insurtechs come into the picture.
ITI: Name one mistake that you have made, and what you learned from it.
Sammy: Our founding goal at YuLife has been to enhance and modernise a mammoth industry that has historically been characterised by caution for hundreds of years. A mistake I made in my desire to enhance the industry was to run too fast and try to innovate every aspect of the life insurance sector. We wanted to rewrite not only the rules of group risk insurance, but also personal insurance immediately, and this ultimately proved to be a bridge too far.
We realised that by focusing on businesses first and succeeding in this arena, we could pave the way to impacting the lives of the greatest number of people in the shortest possible period of time. From this experience, we improved our own processes to protect the individual even further. I learned from this initial mistake, that the most effective way to approach an industry like ours is evolution rather than revolution. You need to take people on a journey with you, rather than rapidly instigating change.
ITI: What problem did you see in the market that led you to create YuLife?
Sammy: Simply put, life insurance has traditionally been about death, rather than life. We wanted to upend that model and introduce life insurance which inspires life. Gamification, data science and AI have so much to offer, and we sought to harness these latest technologies to create an insurance package that rewards healthy habits and offers a tangible incentive to bolster mental and physical wellbeing.
At the same time, we identified burnout and stress in the workplace as one of today’s major health hazards. Workplaces splash the cash on expensive employee engagement programmes, but employees are more jaded than ever. We wanted to equip workplaces with the means to offer their staff benefits of ongoing value to their employees. Instead of relying on transitory ‘nice-to-have’ perks like away days and happy hours, we identified a need for a product like YuLife which incentivizes healthy living on an ongoing basis and in an engaging manner, so that enthusiasm and engagement never fade.
ITI: What is the next step for your insurtech?
Sammy: Thanks to our recent Series B investment, we plan to continue to transform the industry by putting life first and inspiring people to live their best lives every single day. We are looking to develop into new markets, broaden our product offering and expand our UK market penetration.
