An Irish company that gets people cheaper health cover for keeping fit is going global

IRISH INSURANCE STARTUP WeSavvy will launch in the US and other European regions next year – and it’s looking for €2 million in funding to fuel further expansion.

Founded in 2015 by Hesus Inoma, WeSavvy’s platform can be used by insurance providers to make use of lifestyle data from wearables such as Fitbit devices, as well as apps like Apple’s HealthKit and Google Fit.

Following successful pilot projects this year, the startup has partnered with four international insurance companies to allow policyholders to earn rewards for their health habits through lower premiums.

However Inoma said the company, which currently has a staff of six, had to be careful in choosing insurance partners that could give it international scale.

“In Ireland, we had some interest with companies, but we decided not to go with them for the time being because they are only focused domestically. We are limited with our resources, so we have to be clever.”

While Inoma doesn’t plan to reveal the partners’ details until next year, one is a Fortune 500 company with 20 million policyholders and another is a major South African bank.

Hesus Inoma

WeSavvy is a business-to-business provider, charging insurance companies that use its service based on the number of policyholders using the platform.

Its revenue will range from €1 per customer per month for those insurers with fewer than 100,000 people signed up, to half that rate for those providers with more than 1 million users.

Funding

While WeSavvy has secured €120,000 in funding to date via various competitions, Enterprise Ireland and startup programmes, including a funding scheme run by Irish group Entrepreneurs Anonymous, it is yet to take on any private venture capital.

Inoma said the company now aims to raise between €1 million and €2 million in seed funding in the first six months of next year.

“We are in the process of raising serious capital because now we have demand from 18 insurance companies that want to go ahead with our solution.

“At Web Summit, we even got some interest from Latin America. Organisations looked at what we were doing and asked us when we are moving into that region, but it is too early for us.”

The ‘insurtech’ sector has been one of the hot investment tickets in recent months, with CB Insights data showing over $2.5 billion raised by startups in the industry last year.

Accelerator

Earlier this year, WeSavvy was selected for the Global Insurance Accelerator, a well-known startup programme within the sector.

While it secured $40,000 through the scheme, Inoma said the connections he made proved even more valuable – and they were crucial to sealing one of the partnerships for 2017.

“That really helped us break into the US. We spoke to C-level decision-makers at 50 insurance companies during that time.

“We were able to get great insight about what they would like to see from the product and what benefits they see in it.”