Interview with Anina Lutz, co-founder and CEO of online insurance platform Calingo

Ms. Lutz, with 5% of GDP, insurance companies are a mainstay of the Swiss economy. They are also the most frequent invoice issuers. How does your insurance start-up handle customer payments?

We currently use QR-bill for premium payments. In the future, we will also offer payments via credit card and TWINT. For us as a digital insurance company, it is crucial to be able to map all payment processes digitally. That's the only way customer journeys can function without a change in media – and that's precisely what modern customer conve­nience is all about.

As an insuretech company, you sell insurance embedded in a buying process – such as pet insurance at the point of sale when buying a pet cat. And you also offer pet insurance through your website. Why do you support different sales channels, and which one is most successful?

Our core business is doing best. This consists of standard insurance products that we sell as an add-on with the primary products at the point of need. We are consistently optimizing the product market fit through our B2C channel. Among other things, we identify customer needs, collect feedback, and test USPs. With a conversion rate of up to 50%, the results speak for themselves.

You are fully focused on digitalization. The keywords here are “embedded one-click insurance.” Traditionally, insurance is a business based on trust. Isn’t that a contradiction?

On the contrary, trust in a dog breeder or an e-bike dealer is often greater than in traditional insurers. Our experience shows that the insurance company brand is not that relevant. In my opinion, one-stop-shop experiences, and the convenience they offer are more important than the brand.

What form does data management take, such as when exchanging policies and payment information between you, your sales partners, and end customers?

All these processes are fully digitalized. We also try to avoid media discontinuity as far as possible when contacting our customers. In the best-case scenario, the customer no longer has to fill out anything by hand when concluding the contract and has all the relevant information transmitted by the sales partner. Alternatively, the required information can be entered at the user interface on our website. In the case of claims payments, we usually still contact customers via e-mail to request payment information, as we do not normally ask for this at the outset. As a result, a certain level of media discontinuity is currently unavoidable, but we can easily do without physical means of communication. Our aim is for collection to be carried out by our partners wherever possible. We have already implemented such solutions. But it also works the other way around. For example, in the case of pet insurance we take over the collection procedure from the vet, which makes everything as simple as possible for all involved.