Singapore-based insurance technology (insurtech) provider Igloo announced on Tuesday its partnership with homegrown surety broker Philpacific Insurance Brokers Inc. (Philinsure).
“This pandemic brought about an urgent need for traditional industries to tap technology, and this is especially evident in the insurance sector in the Philippines,” said Raunak Mehta, chief commercial officer of Igloo.
Mehta said such initiative aims to support a very important sector in the Philippines, such as small business owners whose work have a very real and immediate impact on their communities.
“We want to be able to provide them with affordable and relevant protection to give them the confidence to focus on their business and their livelihood,” he noted.
Per the UNDP Philippines, micro, small, and medium enterprises account for 99.5 percent of registered businesses in the country, employing approximately 63 percent of the workforce population.
With a digital insurance penetration of less than 1 percent, the availability of insurance protection nationwide is largely offline which limits their reach, especially in these days of the pandemic.
This is a big potential for Igloo to provide highly customized and relevant digital solutions to the consumers in the most accessible, scalable, and affordable manner.
“We are excited to be working with Igloo as part of our effort to better drive our CSR [corporate social responsibility] advocacy to serve Filipino families, wherever they are in the Philippines or in the world,” cited Gordon Alan Joseph, chief executive officer of Philinsure.
Working with Igloo, he added, will help them gain greater efficiencies in their post-pandemic digitization program. He said: “We look forward to working with Igloo to widen our CSR advocacy through its digital platform that is capable of providing a simple, effective means of protecting and therefore empowering the Filipino family.”
Leveraging on its technological capabilities, Igloo delivers operational efficiencies and lower costs for its insurance partners, and provides value-adding products to the customer base of its distribution partners. Its alliance with Philinsure seeks to strengthen its foothold in the Philippine market as it expands the variety of verticals it serves from on-demand customer platforms to banks, fintech, and logistics firms.
Igloo looks to evolve its product offering by investing in the development of new products to cater and fit the ever-changing market needs. Apart from these existing products, the firm aims to work with partners to launch new policies, such as home, business, internet security, pet insurance, and those focused on single diseases such as dengue and Covid-19.
Given this, it plans to hire more people for its Philippine office as it expects the number of policies sold via its platform in the country to grow four times this year.
The company is also looking for strategic investors for its upcoming funding round, which is expected to close by the first quarter of 2021.
Founded by Wei Zhu in June 2016, Igloo is a full-stack insurtech firm, employing big data, dynamic risk assessment, and expedited claims management, to provide partners with widened distribution networks and allows consumers access to customized insurance solutions.
To date, it has sold over 100 million policies in Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
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