Insurtech has successfully broken away from its older sibling, fintech, into its own growing, disruptive category. And quite rightly so, as there are some really great innovations happening in the space. Insurtech unicorns like Lemonade and Hippo have garnered well-deserved column inches for their innovations in consumer insurance, but we’re yet to see the same from insurtechs for business insurance.
Commercial insurance is a highly complex space that, as an insurtech, you need both great tech capabilities as well as deep insurance experience and smarts to navigate. Experience shows that as an insurtech you need the right level of supply-chain control to deliver not only a great customer experience, but also world-class protection. This is where things get exciting for Superscript. With both these things at our core, we believe we’re unique as an insurtech business.
Championing small businesses
Small businesses really are the lifeblood of our economy, making up 99% of all businesses in the UK. They’re also incredibly diverse, from your sole trader or side hustler through to your multi-million pound turnover enterprises. They’re the change makers, the innovators, the risk takers and the great thinkers.
As entrepreneurs ourselves, myself and my co-founder, Ben, identify and relate to the fast-changing needs of the small business community. Ambitious entrepreneurs are disrupting old ways of working and also quite simply doing more things. The evolving risks of the modern-day business has quickly outgrown the appetite of any single insurer – often leaving business owners confused and underinsured. Add to that how small businesses have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic, and you have a desperate need for modern commercial insurance, delivered in line with today’s digital expectations and in a way that is accessible to even the smallest of businesses.
The inspiration that started Superscript remains embedded in our purpose today: to embrace those that make it happen, clearing the way for them to go all in.
Bringing the subscription economy to small business insurance
We provide personalised, flexible and scalable subscription-based insurance designed specifically to meet the ever-evolving needs of ambitious businesses. We’re utilising technology to modernise the broken insurance experience, simplifying and putting customers at the heart of the insurance journey and delivering insurance through an intuitive online experience.
At its core, our product is focused on two key issues:
- Setting an entirely new benchmark in customer experience for insurance
- Providing insurance that is driven by customer needs, as opposed to underwriting appetites
To do this, we’ve created end-to-end proprietary technology that aligns customer needs with supply.
In most competitive solutions, a customer would be presented with a predetermined package from a single insurer – through their quoting process, the user is only made aware of covers that fall within that insurer’s appetite. A single Superscript insurance subscription, on the other hand, can leverage several insurers. By playing to insurers’ various risk appetites, we provide the best of each component of cover – in terms of both coverage and competitiveness. This also allows us to provide a much broader offering and a greater level of customisation. Better yet – the customer deals with one brand, one bill, one interface – one unified Superscript experience.
Maintaining this control over both technology and underwriting has enabled us to do more and approach user experience in new ways. Getting cover set up with Superscript is surprisingly simple, with most customers covered in under 10 minutes.
A tipping point for insurtech?
We’re doing something right! Since the start of 2020, we’ve raised £16.5m in Series A funding, doubled our team and become a Lloyd’s Registered Broker (one of the first insurtechs to do so) which gives us direct access to the world’s leading specialist insurance market. We see this as a real validation of the sustainability of fusing technology with industry smarts to shake-up an established industry.
It really does feel that insurtech is at a pivotal moment in its development. The customer appetite is there, investors are keeping a close eye on and investing significant sums of money into some key players and we’re seeing the impact in the marketplace that insurtech is having. As the business community looks for ways to recover from the pandemic, insurtech may find itself playing a starring role.
