Coverly is closing
In October 2018, Bibby Financial Services, the global partner to more than 12,000 SMEs worldwide, announced its plans to enter the insurance space with a new brand called Coverly. Led by managing director, Jodi Cartwright and Product Director, Bryan Phillips, Coverly was set to launch in Q1 2019 and offer pay-as-you-go commercial insurance for SMEs while asking fewer questions and making it “super quick” to buy coverage.
“We want to be the financial services partner for ambitious businesses, so while SME funding remains at the heart of what we do, we want to be able to help businesses to grow and thrive by providing a wide range of innovative financial solutions. We launched our FX business two years ago for those trading internationally, and insurance provides us with a further opportunity to support the 5.7m SMEs in the UK,” David Postings, Global Chief Executive of BFS said in the announcement. “We know from our own research and third-party data that SMEs find the process of buying and managing insurance confusing and with Coverly, we are creating something which is truly unique. We have a fantastic management team in place with extensive experience and this is a hugely exciting venture for BFS, leveraging our 36-year history of helping small and medium sized businesses to succeed.”
Now, after ~17 months of being live, Coverly is announcing that it is closing.
The team of 15 according to LinkedIn hasn’t seen a significant reduction in its workforce, and currently, only 3 individuals have left the company with two of them holding contract roles.
On the subject of “we know from our own research and third-party data that SMEs find the process of buying and managing insurance confusing,” BFS came to Reason, a design studio, with a strong belief that small business insurance is ripe for disruption, and over five months, Reason helped shape, validate, refine and build the proposition, brand and customer experience of Coverly.
Bottom Line: belief without commitment is worthless.
This post has been updated with a statement from BFS:
“The launch of Coverly has been a real success and the team have achieved a great deal in a short space of time, reaching more than 3,000 customers in just over a year. However, Coverly requires further cash injection in order to grow. In early 2020 we began to look to the external market for this investment. Since the outbreak of Coronavirus we have been unable to attract the investment needed in order to support the business’s growth. As a result, we have taken the decision to close Coverly and invest in our core invoice finance and foreign exchange businesses.”
