On the back of its new funding round, InsurTech Bambi Dynamic wants to update car insurance for a modern world where ownership might be a thing of the past.
Covid-19 threw a spanner in the works for businesses around the world, but for Bambi Dynamic the coronavirus proved to be a perfect way to showcase the need for its services.
“Covid-19 in the short run has changed the way and frequency people commute,” Moshe Pinto, CEO and co-founder of Bambi Dynamic, tells FinTech Global. “Many are working from home and using their private cars less, hence increasing the need for usage-based insurance models.”
The use of ride-sharing services and public transport also dropped as nations around the globe went into lockdown. “All this comes to show that a flexible and fast-to-market insurance product is a good solution for the mobility market,” Pinto continues. “In the longer run, we expect even more changes in the way people commute and additional needs for personalised products with flexibility.”
Unsurprisingly, Bambi Dynamic is adamant that it is able to offer precisely that sort of service. The startup has just secured a $6m Series A round and announced the first deployment of its platform for flexible, personalised insurance products for insurers and mobility providers.
The Tel Aviv-based InsurTech venture’s round was led by MS&AD Ventures, the venture capital arm of Japan’s largest insurance and financial services provider MS&AD Insurance Group. The Israeli insurer the Phoenix Insurance Company also backed the round and partnered up with Bambi Dynamic to launch the startup’s first product.
“Apart from the potential strategic collaboration between the companies, we expect to use the proceeds to expand our global offering to additional markets such as Asia, Europe and America,” Pinto says.
He and his co-founder Zion Madmon launched Bambi Dynamic in 2017 after noticing a considerable shift in consumer expectations in the insurance industry. “Digital transformation, the fast development of mobile and web technologies, the on-demand economy and the shared economy have given rise to a new kind of personalised consumption,” Pinto explains.
That technological adoption had driven changes in the mobility sector, such as the introduction of new ride-sharing and micro-mobility services.
“The customer-centric approach does not overlook the insurance industry,” Pinto continues. “Competition for the customers and the rising InsurTech scene are pushing the incumbents to evolve especially for mobility, which is rapidly moving forward as an industry. On the other hand, the task of embracing technology on top of the existing legacy systems and endless patched IT web is more than challenging for these giants with hundreds of years worth of experience in managing, assessing and pricing risk.”
Bambi Dynamic was launched to bridge that gap. “[By) using data, connectivity and cloud technology we created a white-label mobility insurance platform that bypasses the IT legacy challenges and enables insurers and mobility providers to offer their consumers customer-centric, user-friendly and fairly-priced personalised insurance products,” Pinto says.
“We are creating insurance products together with our insurance and mobility partners, customising the platform to their needs, integrating it and launching the products. Bambi is future proof, offering a long-term sustainable solution for mobility insurance for both insurance incumbents, OEMs and mobility companies to develop, distribute and manage insurance products characterised with on-demand activation and usage-based billing – in short personalisation.”
Of course, Bambi Dynamic is far from the only InsurTech startup catering to the mobility space. Just Auto, Paydrive, Noblr, By Miles and ThingCo are just some of the startups innovating in this space.
What sets Bambi Dynamic apart, according to Pinto, is that the startup is neither a full stack insurer nor a managing general agent, but a solution provider. “Unlike other technology providers, we offer a solution for the whole spectrum of mobility insurance,” he says. “Our platform is agnostic to any source of data and can receive inputs from multiple sources of data simultaneously.
“As such we can offer many insurance products for the automotive and MaaS industry and we are future proof. The Bambi Dynamic Platform (BIP) also includes insurance modules and can serve as a digital extension to any insurance company still using legacy systems. With BIP they can be fast to adopt new technologies and release new insurance products for the rapidly changing mobility ecosystem.”
But despite having developed this solution, Bambi Dynamic’s founding team initially found it difficult to establish a partnership with a big carrier. “Although we are in the same industry, carriers and InsurTechs work very differently and collaboration between them presents a very challenging task,” he says.
“For example, the culture at an incumbent is profoundly different to that of an agile, fast-paced InsurTech startup. If the partnership is focused on a point solution and everyone knows the roles they’re expected to play, this helps to establish a cultural blend. Innovation doesn’t succeed overnight. Both parties must deeply understand that the first win takes multiple trials, and the need for continuous innovation, development, updates and upgrades is inevitable and incessant.”
However, the new Series A round marks the announcement of one such partnership together with the Phoenix Insurance Company. “We have the privilege to work with the most visionary and technologically advanced partner in the local Israeli market,” Pinto says. “No doubt, the collaboration wasn’t a piece of cake but having a target-dedicated incumbent partner made the day-to-day challenges more comfortable. With zeal and dedication, both teams successfully overcame the challenges and learned a lot from working together to a level where I think we carved a niche in the InsurTech industry.”
Through the investment deal, the startup and the Phoenix Insurance Company has partnered to launch the launch The Phoenix Drive, a pay-as-you-go, private vehicle insurance solution.
“Bambi’s technology enables us to offer our customers game-changing personal and commercial auto insurance products, and provides us with a competitive advantage for meeting the complex technological and logistical needs insurers must adopt to address the ever-evolving mobility ecosystem,” says Ron Shvili, executive VP and chief technology, information systems and innovation officer at The Phoenix Insurance Company.
The Phoenix Drive leverages BIP capabilities such as premium payments per distance driven; the ability to replace, add, or delete drivers on-demand each with adjusted premiums; tracking of driving information for the primary driver, as well as occasional drivers; premium rates adjusted to personal motorist characteristics; and at-a-click policy management, renewal or termination.
Jon Soberg, managing partner of MS&AD Ventures, added, “Bambi’s team of veteran entrepreneurs has really impressed us. We believe the Bambi Insurance platform’s focus on the modern mobility environment is laying the groundwork to build a multitude of digitised, personalized and scalable products for P&C insurance.”
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