Does keeping a track of premium due dates and expiration dates of your insurances seem a headache to you? PolicyPal has got the cure! This startup puts you at ease by getting rid of all the paperwork and the pain of managing policies. How? It creates a digital insurance folder that is free for anyone, who doesn’t have time to track, manage and buy insurances.
Started in early 2016, PolicyPal simply wants to make buying and managing insurance simple for everyone. From helping you to understand your policies and what’s missing in your coverage, to sending reminders when premium due dates are up, policy is expiring, ensuring you are always well protected. Val Jihsuan Yap, CEO of PolicyPal says,
The app gives you a peace of mind, so that you always have access to your insurance policies even if the unexpected happens. The team provide an independent review of your coverage and let you know the missing links. Never worry about overpaying or being under-insured.
Val has international experience in insurance, banking and risk assurance and the tech co-founders had built a food delivery startup prior to joining PolicyPal. The idea of the startup stemmed from a personal problem where a claim could not be made due to a lapsed policy, as well as preventing coverage overlaps and identifying coverage gaps. PolicyPal lets you know what’s missing in your coverage and connects you with independent financial advisors to fulfil the purchase.
The Tech
The core technologies includes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in order to read the text from the image, as well as feature extraction to pull relevant details into relevant fields to automate the population of data. Machine learning is a key part of the product to remove the conflict of interest and bias between consumers and agents who are commissioned to sell insurance products.
As more policies are processed, PolicyPal would be able to implement deep data analytics to automate the coverage gap analysis, shortening the whole process of the portfolio review. Instead of meeting the financial advisors several times before getting the insurance policy, it brings this experience to the digital channel. Now the users are empowered with more knowledge of their financial needs before meeting the financial advisors to fulfil the purchase.
In the sparsely populated insurance space in the Asian market, there are FinTech startups in price comparison space, focusing on sales distribution. However, PolicyPal aims to help you to understand your coverage, identifying your protection gap, finding you the right fit for you and notifying you when your coverage is expiring. It ensures protection of you and your family.
Journey so far and the road ahead
The journey has been challenging as Insur-tech is not just about technology innovation, it’s also about business model innovation. The team wishes to work with the partners – insurers or brokers, to ensure that it can provide the new innovative products to the consumers.
Having a great technology is never the only focus, a good marketing strategy is crucial to drive the business forward. Gaining people’s trust has also proven to be a challenging obstacle to tackle for many FinTech and Insur-tech startups.
PolicyPal puts consumers first by empowering them to make the right choices that best suit their needs. It has 500 users and processed $850,000 annual premiums since one month’s launch.
One major goal is to have a successful partnership with a licensed broker to distribute insurance products through the digital platform. It aims to build a strong base in Singapore, strengthening their value proposition as well as complete the product while building a following, before expanding outwards towards South East Asia. PolicyPal intends to position itself as the front runner to build the infrastructure for insurance of the future, one policy at a time.
