We decided to choose claimBuddy as our Newcomer of the month in March. What are they doing? What was the best advice given to them during their foundation phase and do they have an office turtle? Here are 10 questions to claimBuddy.
1. Why did you found your startup, which problem do you address and how do you solve it?
In the course of the
digitization the insurance industry is facing big challenges. Currently, claims
for the insurance holder are primarily submitted via paper or PDF forms and
maybe online input masks, which are complex and difficult to understand.
Our interactive chatbot only asks the most essential questions in order to
record the damage in a fast and com-prehensive way. The insurance holder can
upload photos of the damage or respective documents. Afterwards we evaluate the
claim with the help of artificial intelligence (especially image recognition).
After successfully evaluating the monetary value, the insurance holder receives
a payout proposal with the aim of regulating the damage immediately.
Apart from image recognition we use further technologies, such as location detection (Google Maps) and the analysis of weather data to test the plausibility of the claim. We can generate and send the data to the insurer in different output formats, such as PDF, XML, BiPro as email attachment or integrate our solution into the proprie-tary insurance software.
2. What gave you the idea to found claimBuddy?
Our CEO Amin had a damage that was quite complex to report and then took several weeks to settle. He thought this process should be much faster by digitizing it.
3. What is special about your business-model, what are you doing differently?
By using claimBuddy the insurance holders as well as the insurance companies profit. The insurance holder enjoys time savings of up to 99 percent. Through claimBuddy it is possible to report and fully document the damage within a few minutes, as well as settle the claim. Compared to the standard process there is no need for further correspondence or requests in the case that documents are missing. Today these requests have to be made by the intermediary or an employee via E-mail. Consequently, the insurance holder receives his money faster and his satisfaction increases.
Insurance companies save costs through process automation. The automated damage report and settlement allows savings of up to 20-30 minutes per claim, according to experience. These time savings can be scaled to the corresponding amounts of claims. Additionally, in the case of big events causing a lot of claims at once, our solution is easily scalable to the requirements of the insurers.
4. What was the most valuable advice somebody gave to you during your foundation phase?
In the very early stage, our investor told us to always trust our guts before making difficult decisions. This was quite a good advice and by now he became our investor.
5. What was your greatest success so far?
We were able to win a German insurance company from Hanover as our first customer.
6. What is your biggest need/your next challenge?
After successfully entering the German market, we plan to expand to the European market by starting with the German-speaking region of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The expansion is planned at the earliest in 2020.
7. Where did you meet?
Amin and Christoph met at the Institute for Risk and Insurance at Leibniz University Hanover. Amin was a working student and responsible for the IT support at the institute and Christoph was a researcher. We met our third team member, Christian, on a Lean Startup Competition in Hanover late 2016. All in all, our team sees the diversity of our skills and capabilities as a huge opportunity to establish claimBuddy’s long-term success.
8. Where do you see your startup in 3 years?
claimBuddy will be well known in Europe and will be used by 5-10 percent of the insurance companies
9. Do you have an office cat, doc, turtle or any other pet?
Our Cofounder Christoph has a cute little dog named Joey. He is an integral part of our team, responsible for spreading a good mood in the office and also for getting us out of the office regularly to go for a walk with him.
10. If an Investor gave you 500.000 Euro, what would you do with the money?
The € 500,000 will be used to fund the product development and improve our AI, especially the claim testing mechanism and assessment algorithm to make claimBuddy more beneficial and comfortable for insurance holders and companies.
Check claimBuddy’s profile here!
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