The process of insuring a vehicle after purchase can be arduous, but it doesn’t need to be. Looking to ensure customers have an all-in-one experience when buying a car, Wrisk offers an embedded insurance solution which is customisable for a manufacturer and can be sold to customers alongside their new vehicle.
To get a better understanding of Wrisk and how it has achieved its current status in the insurance market, in this week’s Behind the Idea, we got the opportunity to hear from the company’s CEO, Nimeshh Patel.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
Wrisk is the leader in embedded insurance solutions for automotive brands, whereby coverage or protection is sold to customers alongside the purchase of a new car as a native feature. Moreover, the solution extends beyond the purchase cycle, targeting customers throughout their ownership journey. Our embedded workflow allows us to target these customers pre-sale and post-sale through integration across their entire digital ecosystem (drive app, aftersales, car configurators, dealer websites, etc).
What this means for car manufacturers is that they can utilise our customisable technology and data solutions to directly sell a protection suite to customers, in a way that suits their commercial needs. This can range from brands being able to promote insurance to drive more car or finance product sales to having the flexibility to offer customised product bundles tailored to specific markets, to selecting multi-insurer capacity approaches that drive higher eligibility and conversion.
What problem was your company set up to solve?
Automotive manufacturers want to create a world-class, consistent experience for customers globally. With secular tailwinds such as the changing ownership models, cars becoming computers on wheels and the path to purchase becoming more digital, brands are looking to integrate with a single independent provider who is capable of being a single integration point globally delivering them unified MI and insights.
Their world is transforming rapidly, with it becoming increasingly clear that they a looking for a future-proofed solution where partners are capable of providing the embedded workflow stack, launching innovative insurance products and features that drive strong penetration through embedded approaches. Moreover, they need a partner that arranges complex multi-insurer and captive insurance solutions with data enablement that has the potential to drive competitive advantage.
All this whilst offering intermediary services to reinforce underpowered local AutoOEM insurance teams that gives them more control of their customers.
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
Wrisk’s core superpower has been its focus on this specific segment in the market. As such, since launch, the business has built capabilities beyond its competitors. This gives the business some level of defensibility but we know that we need to continue to execute roadmap plans to sustain advantage.
The company has built significant domain experience in MVI insurance rating and launched features that truly have helped our clients achieve both penetration and support traditional revenue growth. Moreover, the business today supports over 80,000 customers and, as such, has steadily built its data capabilities to support both retention and new business efforts.
As a scale up, whilst Wrisk has hired world class talent, it has also been careful to put in processes and new functional disciplines to drive sustainable scale. In doing so, Wrisk is now ISO 27001 & 22301 certified, adding further credibility to our approach.
We are working with our brand partners to evolve our insurance products with a focus on innovation and are now at a point where we have become profitable in the UK, having developed and executed a playbook for growth. Our ambitions are larger than ever, and our next chapter brings with it the opportunity to scale across multiple markets with a number of international opportunities now coming into sight, having launched a team in Europe.
What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?
The largest achievement at Wrisk is to grow a highly resilient team capable of navigating roadblocks such as the pandemic, ‘industry inertia’, and ‘cash constraints’. We have had to work with a quiet ego prioritising close collaboration with each other and our partners to solve many complex problems. This has led to the growth we announced for 2024 where we have scaled to becoming the leading provider of embedded insurance for auto brands in the UK where we are proud to have achieved profitability.
How would you describe the culture of your company?
First and foremost, we have a caring culture at Wrisk with an emphasis on each and every employee developing a ‘growth mindset’. A love of learning and resilience are key determinants to succeeding in the space we operate in. We create work environments that optimise for this.
We respect one another as colleagues and as people, recognising that we all have personal challenges that do sometimes impact the workplace. As such, we are all expected to take accountability for our actions, but ‘blame’ is never assigned for a mistake – instead, we take the time to get to the root of what happened and how we can prevent it in the future.
This has led to a truly passionate team, who care about the company and our partners, but above all about each other.
What’s in store for the future?
Wrisk’s platform has been built to efficiently and effectively scale to any level, and with our deep insurance expertise, global expansion is the obvious next step for us.
We already have two offices in Europe – Vienna and Munich – and are about to announce another new office further afield. We are already taking steps to penetrate international markets, aligned to a considered strategy that will continue to take care of our people and existing partners, while also developing the opportunity that embedded insurance presents around the world.
