Like few other insurers, Baloise is committed to a digitization strategy and invests in a wide variety of startups. The latest engagement in the founding scene of Berlin makes sense.
Two years ago, Baloise founded a fintech in Mitte of Berlin, which specializes in digital car insurance. As was heard at the time from industry circles, the Swiss company invested around 45 million euros in the startup Friday.
This start-up is differentiated by the fact that it sells its insurance only online and customers pay a monthly premium. The premium can be cancelled and that corresponds from the kilometers. For now, the company is only present in Germany. Other markets are possible, such as the Benelux countries. An expansion into Switzerland is not planned, because it does not want to cannibalize the Baloise own auto policy unnecessarily.
In its first year, 2017, Friday was able to attract around 15,000 customers and double the number of last year. This was later announced on Thursday at its annual media conference in Basel by Baloise.
The value is slightly below expectations because they wanted to clearly outperform 30,000 customers, as a Friday spokesman told Finews last October. But the trend remains intact because there are now 45,000 policies so that the startup has good chances to come in the medium term on 100,000 policy. This is the guideline to reach the breakeven point.
New Shareholder
However, this goal has its price for the time being. For Baloise, it is now investing another CHF 85 million on Friday, as further publicized on Thursday. And that’s not all, Sevenventures, the financial investor of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, and the media investor German Media Pool are now investing a total of 39 million euros which is around 45 million Swiss francs in digital insurance through media for equity investments.
Media for Equity Investments means that through Sevenventures, Friday can promote its insurance products in high reach and target group specific advertising environments of the ProSiebenSat.1 Group. And German Media Pool will bundle Friday’s media companies in the categories television, radio, out-of-home and print.
New Consumer Behavior
“The time to get started is ideal. Because digitization is currently changing consumer behavior in the insurance sector and offers unique opportunities for new insurance products”, says Aljoscha Kaplan, Managing Director of German Media Pool.
“First TV campaigns have already achieved very good results”, adds Florian Pauthner, CEO Sevenventures. That is also necessary because Friday aims to become the most popular digital insurer in Germany by 2021. To achieve this goal, the Baloise obviously spares no effort and expense.
Also published on Medium.