CoverGo: The story of Asia’s leading InsurTech provider

What is CoverGo’s mission – how was the startup formed and how do you think CoverGo and continue working towards being one of the leading InsurTech providers?

The original idea to start CoverGo comes from our founder Tomas who personally experienced how complicated and stressful insurance is when his father passed away 5 years ago. He had to repay his father’s mortgage and his insurance claim was rejected. He had to go through lots of paperwork during this difficult time as there was no record of his father's policies and in the end, he realised that the insurance coverage lapsed. That’s why he decided to start CoverGo – the leading provider of no-code cutting-edge technology to the insurance industry, with a mission to empower all insurance companies to make insurance 100% digital and accessible to everyone.

With a team of insurance experts, we clearly understand insurance companies are unable to innovate and launch products without having to undergo a long and costly development process due to their cumbersome legacy systems (6+ months). Companies realise more than ever that custom IT development is too slow and costly while off-the-shelf software packages are not flexible enough, hence they are unable to satisfy changing product requirements and customer needs. The only way forward is a truly configurable no-code platform allowing companies to be agile and stay relevant in the changing world. Therefore, CoverGo’s first out-of-the-box, modular, no-code insurance platform, powered by 500+ open insurance APIs aims to enable insurance companies to transform digitally in the most flexible, scalable and cost-effective way. ‍

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What were the industry challenges you faced building CoverGo and how did you overcome them?

The main challenge we faced at first was customer buy-in for this new type of technology, due to the mostly traditional mindset of insurance companies' leaders. At first, many companies didn't even want to transform digitally as they didn’t see an immediate need, however, COVID-19 has made these leaders change their mind towards accelerating the need for digital transformation due to the increasing customer demand.

CoverGo has therefore adapted its business strategy towards this, focusing on clear use cases and measurable results when speaking to clients, which has helped us get acceptance more easily. Besides our team composing of insurance experts who know how the industry thinks and makes decisions, our platform was also developed to be modular and this enables insurers to get on board with minimal cost, time and risk. For example, by improving one product line or doing a proof of concept, this enables insurers to get on board quickly and we then offer the unique possibility to scale on top of it. These proof of concepts done quickly and starting small to enter the door, are the key strategies that enabled CoverGo to overcome the main challenges we had. ‍

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Tell us about an inciting incident – was there any experience, encounter or revelation that sparked a business idea/made you realise how to further improve the business?

The medical insurance ecosystem is known to be complex, and insurers are increasingly looking to gain a competitive edge in this segment. The high cost of maintaining legacy systems, the lack of business oversight, slow speed to market and rampant fraudulent claims due to these not being optimal, kept insurers looking for new & quick solutions on the market, yet none existed.

With the CoverGo platform being modular, api-driven and supporting all product lines, we have then decided to spend efforts and assemble the platform modules to develop an end-to-end yet fully configurable and flexible off-the-shelf group medical insurance platform, a first in the market. The platform enables seamless collaboration between stakeholders, increases efficiency, reduces operational costs, and delivers a world class customer experience to the insurer's customers.

The platform has proven to be a success, with MSIG already using it to reduce claims adjudication costs, reduce product development costs/product configuration costs, reduce time taken to configure custom products for clients leading to faster response times, improve customer experience, cut costs in integrations to sync data between systems in real time and increase efficiency and productivity from reducing the amount of redundant data entries.

Many other large insurers are now considering CoverHealth. On the other hand, we also discovered many business users needing to submit the tickets to the IT department for a minor change on product details or for launching a product, and it takes months. That’s why our no-code platform aims at allowing internal staff without programming expertise to manage the platform and also significantly shorten time to market (99% time saved for product building) and digitize insurance policy admin process. ‍

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How did the F10 program further aid you in your scaling journey and what are some of the takeaways you gained? What was the most valuable aspect of your experience?

F10 has helped CoverGo gain valuable insights on the market and the industry, helping us to better define our scaling strategy and validate our solutions. F10 also has been very helpful in making introductions to key players of the industry, which has enabled us to start discussion with potential clients. ‍

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What is the most important thing/event you are working on right now?

CoverGo is currently working on many important projects, with 2 main ones standing out. The first being the raising of a pre-series B funding round that we are in the process of and are aiming to have it closed by November this year. Second is the soon-to-go live of many large projects for top insurers in Asia, one of them being MSIG end to end group medical platform, and Fubon Life Insurance new online distribution platform.

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What do you think is the most significant emerging FinTech trend that will define the decade?

Open insurance APIs are currently on the agenda of an increasing number of regulators across Asia, with it being a key strategy on their roadmap. APIs are seen as an inevitable way moving forward across all markets for creating robust insurance ecosystems. As CoverGo is a leader in insurance open APIs, and the platform being fully API-driven being the key to enable its flexibility and modularity, we believe APIs are the trend that will define the decade.