Pineapple, a peer-to-peer insurance tech startup based in Johannesburg, South Africa has secured seed funding of R5.2m from Lireas Holdings, the strategic investment arm of Hannover-Re Group Africa, in return for a minority shareholding in a move set to bring their innovative insurance offering to market.
With the seed funding, Pineapple aims to revolutionise the way insurance is done, starting with the mechanics of the actual business model. Todays insurance companies only provide R36 value for every R100 premium paid due to excessive expense lines, unfair profiting and an abundance of fraud. Pineapple want to change that.
According to Pineapple Co-founder Matthew Elan Smith, “Our true innovation of creating a decentralised peer-to-peer insurer is only as good as how well we can deliver that business model to our users. This drives us to be absolutely meticulous when it comes to our user experience in order to minimalize the friction of getting insured.”
The team says it will remove the conflict of interest in insurance as currently, every claim an insurer denies adds to their bottom line which is an inherent conflict of interest whereby the provider of the service is actually incentivised to not follow through on their promise. The firm also aims to completely remove the conflict by returning ALL unused premium back to the hands of the consumer.
The platform also aims to provide complete transparency – showing you exactly where your premiums go and how they are used and reintroduce affinity into insurance – Connect with friends, family, trusted acquaintances to stop paying for fraudsters and bad risks who are currently ruining the insurance value chain. This also removes the need for the insurer to treat you like a criminal when you submit a claim.
The team aims to be a flexible, scalable and decentralised peer-to-peer insurer that provides fully fledged insurance coverage to its members and to make insurance fun. The team is set to integrate AI and blockchain soon. You can sign up for early access spots at www.Pineapple.co.za at the moment.
