The digitisation of legacy industries shows no signs of slowing and nor does the enthusiasm of VCs for startups doing just that. Knip, the Swiss ‘mobile-first’ digital insurance broker, has closed a $15.7 million Series B round led by U.S.-based Route 66 Ventures.
Germany’s Creathor Ventures and U.S.-based QED Investors co-led the round, while existing investors Orange Growth Capital and Redalpine Capital also participated. The company is talking up the Series B as the largest fintech investment in Switzerland to date.
The Knip app for iOS and Android, which has seen 330,000 downloads in Germany and Switzerland, essentially moves the insurance brokerage and policy management process onto your mobile phone. This includes giving you an overview of existing insurance policies, tariffs and services, as well as automatically analysing your insurance coverage to spot any potential gaps and providing recommendations on how to improve individual insurance protection.
“We want to build an easier way to experience and interact with your insurances,” Knip co-founder Dennis Just, who was previously co-founder and COO of mobile banking app Numbrs, tells me. “With the Knip app, customers can get an overview of their insurances. They see how much they have to pay for each insurance, when they have to pay and for how long their insurance contract is valid.”
Interestingly, Knip also employs a team of brokers — purely salaried and not commision-based — who, upon request, will advise on insurance products, tariffs and services to help you optimise your various insurance. In this sense the process isn’t entirely digital or tech-driven (and therefore, it could be argued, slightly less scalable).
“With just one click, they can open the entire insurance policy, so every important information is always at hand. Furthermore, our insurance consultants help users find the insurances that best fit their needs,” adds Just.
The Knip app, which is free of charge, also enables you to change tariffs, take out new insurance contracts and cancel old policies. The startup makes money by being paid a fee by insurance companies it partners with for managing their insurance policies or by taking a commission for new insurance contacts.
Meanwhile, Just says competitors include “copycats” GetSafe from Rocket Internet, and Clark from FinLeap. He reckons Knip differentiates itself from the competition by building its own backend and data science to automatically provide advice on better, cheaper and missing insurance coverage, and by being a full-stack insurance broker that owns the entire insurance broker process.
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