Cuvva, the insurance disruptor founded in 2015, is about to take on the UK’s biggest insurers, having raised €17.5 million venture capital to target the long-term motor insurance business.
Cuvva is building a new kind of insurance that’s flexible, simple and jargon-free. The idea came about after co-founder, Freddy Macnamara, couldn’t get hourly short-term insurance, so he set out to build a marketplace for flexible insurance. The Cuvva mobile app was the first to provide both hourly motor insurance and insurance via an app in the UK, and has expanded to offer personal car, learners, van, taxi, and travel insurance.
Cuvva has since sold more than 40 million hours of insurance and has over 250,000 customers, becoming the UK’s most downloaded insurance app. Cuvva’s app also includes features such as MOT reminders, tax reminders and advice on where to buy the cheapest petrol. The platform promises in-app live customer support, with a one minute response time, 24 hours a day.
Cuvva’s Series A funding comes as the company prepares to launch a pay-monthly insurance product for the first time, a key step in its ambition to provide one gateway app to serve all consumer insurance needs. The pay-monthly motor product will launch early in 2020 and could cut average annual bills for car owners significantly. Cuvva plans to cut out all middlemen including brokers and comparison websites, which charge insurers about £70 on each policy sold. Unlike legacy insurers, Cuvva will not charge a fee to spread payments over the year and it will not penalise loyal customers with dual pricing. The startup will offer the same savings, whether you are signing up as a new customer or a returning customer. It also won’t charge admin fees to alter personal details, like a change in job title.
Funding will also go towards building the team, adding engineers, developers, marketeers and customer operations staff to its 80-strong team. Over the next 18 months, it expects to double in size and already has a 30 strong in-house customer operations team.
RTP Global, Breega and Digital Horizon have joined seed investors LocalGlobe, Techstars Ventures, Tekton and Seedcamp to invest in the app-based insurance platform, which recently announced the appointment of the Lloyd’s of London chairman as its chair. Angel investors from the insurance sector, including Dominic Burke, the CEO of Jardine Lloyd Thompson and Faisal Galaria, the former chief strategy and investments officer of GoCompare, have also put in capital.
Freddy Macnamara, founder said: “The way insurance is sold hasn’t kept up with the way people live their lives now. We buy lots of goods and services via flexible subscriptions to suit our on-demand lifestyles. Why shouldn’t you be able to do that for insurance?I started Cuvva when I couldn’t find flexible insurance to help me share my car. Four years on from launch we are still discovering how big the problem we are solving really is. We’re now selling 3% of all UK motor insurance policies but we’ve got so much further to go. Cuvva is going to be the place where you buy all your insurance, all through our mobile app.”
“The insurance industry across Europe is ready for a fresh approach. The UK has a long history of initiating change in the way that insurance is sold and Cuvva has devised a product that has incredible appeal for a new generation of car owners and borrowers. We are thrilled to be able to begin this journey to build a whole new way of buying insurance with Freddy and the team,” Anton Inshutin, managing partner at RTP Global, said.
