“At its core, insurance is about security – security for families going through their most challenging times, and for individuals in need of support,” says Julian Teicke, Founder & CEO of Wefox – a digital insurance company. Teicke, through Wefox, wants to offer insurance by creating technology for insurance brokers who can provide optimised and tailored advice “that ensures its customers are protected when they need it most.”
In a recent development, Berlin-based Wefox announced that it has raised $650M (approx €531.64M) in its Series C round of funding, at a post-money valuation of $3B (approx €2.45B). This round represents the largest funding round for an insurtech globally, to date.
Investors and the capital utilisation
The current round was led by Target Global. In addition, the round also saw participation from existing investors including, OMERS Ventures, Gsquared, Merian, Horizons Ventures, Eurazeo, Mubadala, Creditease, Salesforce Ventures, Speedinvest, Alma Mundi Ventures, Victory Park Capital, GR Capital, Mountain Partners, Seedcamp, and Sound Ventures and new investors LGT, Partners Group, Jupiter, and FinTLV.
According to Wefox, the funds will be invested in expanding into the US and Asia within the next two years. In addition, the proceeds will also help the company to strengthen its presence in its existing markets in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland.
Wefox CFO & co-founder Fabian Wesemann, says, “This investment strengthens our growth strategy and moves us closer to realising our vision – to prevent 30 per cent of risks from happening – in order to offer the most advanced service to our customers. As part of this, we want to ensure that we are building the technology to automate our business processes to have a STP ratio consistently above 80 per cent.”
Technology to make insurance simple
Wefox was founded in 2015 by Julian Teicke, Fabian Wesemann, and Dario Fazlic. It is a digital insurance company that claims to be driven by a single purpose: to make people safe and prevent risk by reinventing insurance at scale through technology. Wefox is the parent company of Wefox Insurance – an in-house regulated insurance carrier.
Teicke says, “Our business has grown significantly over the past six years, and since the beginning we have consistently delivered strong year-on-year growth. This year we took several important steps, including unifying the business under one brand, expanding into Poland, and setting up a deep tech team in Paris. Within the next few years, we plan to expand our global footprint by increasing our presence in Europe and moving into both the US and Asian markets.”
In 2020, Wefox reported a profit for its insurance business, Wefox Insurance, making it the first digital insurance company to reach profitability. In addition, Wefox’s revenue increased to $143M in 2020, doubling its 2019 revenue.
A licensed insutech
According to Wefox, it is a fully licensed digital insurance company that sells insurance through intermediaries and not directly to customers.
“This is why Wefox has built a huge network of advisors across Europe. We believe that insurance is all about people, and we believe that technology is an enabler and should not replace the human connection. We have set out to improve the customer experience for both our advisors and our customers through technology to increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer acquisition costs, increase cross-selling, and decrease churn,” adds Teicke.
Teicke mentions on the Wefox website that by the end of 2021, the company will have built a network of over 3,000 independent brokers advising people to protect themselves with Wefox Insurance in Germany. “We have also hired and trained our own brokers in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, ensuring we can give the best possible advice to you wherever you are.”
These independent brokers have together advised more than 500,000 customers on getting the right insurance coverage. “Our technology means that Wefox can provide higher quality advice to you than anyone else, at a scale that will be hard to match,” adds Teicke.
