“With the Family Offices we now have large investors from German-speaking countries on board who are entrepreneurs themselves and from whom we can therefore learn a lot,” says the Getsafe boss.
(Photo: Friedemann Hertrampf / Getsafe)
Frankfurt The Heidelberg insurance start-up Getsafe has raised 55 million euros from investors. The fresh capital comes from family offices in Germany and Switzerland as well as the venture capitalist Earlybird. “With the Family Offices, we now have large investors from German-speaking countries on board who are entrepreneurs themselves and from whom we can therefore learn a lot,” says Getsafe boss Christian Wiens.
In December 2020, the Insurtech had already received 25 million euros. The entire financing round, in which the reinsurers Swiss Re and Commerz Ventures also took part, thus amounts to 80 million euros. Getsafe wants to put the money into its own insurance license and invest in technology and growth.
The start-up offers liability, household, legal protection and motor insurance in Germany as well as household insurance in Great Britain. With just a few clicks and in real time, customers can use the app to take out insurance, clarify questions or report damage.
Getsafe has now won a total of 250,000 customers. A quarter of all premium and customer growth came from the UK market. Entry into other European countries is to follow soon. France, Spain, Italy and Austria are particularly interesting, says Wiens.
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Getsafe gives the green light for Bafin license
Fast growth is one thing. But it is also important to satisfy existing customers. In the coming months, Getsafe wants to further improve the customer experience in the event of a claim and offer more services via app. Customer ratings on the Internet show that users usually find it easy and uncomplicated to take out insurance. When it comes to claims settlement, however, they sometimes criticize long waiting times.
With its own license for the property insurance business, Getsafe hopes to get even better here. In order to control the entire value chain, the company applied for approval from the financial supervisory authority Bafin last year. Getsafe originally hoped to get through the licensing process faster. “We are now very confident that we will get the green light from the Bafin by the end of the year,” says Wiens.
So far, Getsafe has acted as a so-called underwriter – it develops and sells its own policies, but another insurer carries the risk. Motor vehicle insurance, for example, was created in cooperation with the Swiss Re subsidiary Iptiq, and digital health insurer Ottonova is a cooperation partner for supplementary dental insurance. Getsafe also wants to offer digital life insurance in the future and will initially also rely on partners here. “In the medium term, we also want a license for the life insurance business,” emphasizes Wiens.
The aim is also to grow with the predominantly young, digitally affine customers and to offer them additional insurance products. The premium volume per customer is still below 100 euros per year – this value should continue to rise.
Insurtechs are in demand with investors
Other insurtechs have also received higher sums from investors this year. Wefox was able to complete the largest financing round for a German insurtech company. The Berlin start-up, whose primary insurer is registered in Liechtenstein, collected 650 million dollars (533 million euros) at the beginning of June. The main investor was the venture capitalist Target Global. The digital insurance manager Clark already received 69 million euros at the turn of the year, including from the Chinese Internet company Tencent. Ottonova received 40 million euros in August. Getsafe investor Earlybird was also present at the round.
It is noticeable that it was mainly the start-ups active in the end customer business that got the chance. With regard to their chances of success, market observers have repeatedly expressed concerns in the past and pointed out that insurtechs, which act as technology suppliers for large insurers and banks, could possibly grow more easily.
Wefox was valued at three billion dollars (2.5 billion euros) in its financing round – making it the only unicorn among Insurtechs in this country. Getsafe founder of Vienna does not want to comment on the evaluation.
At the same time, he makes it clear that going public is a good option: “We have mandated Morgan Stanley and consider an IPO in the next 36 months to be realistic.” Wefox had also spoken about stock exchange plans.
More: After Wefox’s mega financing round: Who will be the next unicorn in the insurance market?