Insurtech Exit. Getsafe’s digital broker unit sold to Verivox.
General Atlantic co-owned price comparison site Verivox acquires insurance broker unit of Getsafe. Getsafe shifts focus on building its own insurance platform.
Just months after General Atlantic’s $370m investment in the digital business of ProSiebenSat.1 (called NuCom), the group’s own price comparison site, Verivox, has acquired Getsafe’s broker business unit.
Launched in 2015 and backed by prominent investors like Partech, Acton and btov, Getsafe is one of the world’s first digital insurance wallets leading a growing trend of digital insurance brokers, like Knip, Clark, or Wefox, popping up in Europe.
With the integration of Getsafe’s technology, over 8 Million Verivox customers will be able to manage all of their insurance policies on the web or mobile app. Verivox price comparison algorithms will then help customers optimize their insurance portfolio by finding better deals for car or renters insurance within seconds.
For Getsafe’s CEO and founder, Christian Wiens, selling the profitable business unit was not an easy step to take, but a great opportunity to better focus on the company’s mission. Wiens declared, “We felt it became very hard and limited to further improve the customer experience by just re-selling traditional policies from established insurance carriers as a broker. To dramatically improve the insurance experience as a whole, from buying a policy to filing a claim, we need to build the insurance product ourself.”
The transaction comes just months after Getsafe launched its very own insurance platform earlier this year. Similar to companies like Lemonade, Next Insurance, or Metromile the startup is now focused on developing its own insurance proposition and has therefore partnered with re-insurance carrier Munich Re. As pointed out by Wiens, the company has already sold 30,000 of its policies via its mobile app in 2018. Getsafe plans to use part of the profits from the deal to develop further products and expand to new international markets.