Still stealthy, new InsureTech startup, Ostraa, announces major appointment of Amanda Turcotte as Chief Product Officer (CPO)
Ostraa harnesses the power of mobile technologies to offer Low and Moderate Income (LMI) households new value added insurance services that create meaningful social benefit for the customer and sustainable long term customer relationships for Ostraa, partnering insurers and corporates.
“Amanda’s accomplishments are exceptional in the insurance industry and unprecedented in the insuretech space” says Maximilian Weiner, founder of Ostraa.
Turcotte comes to Ostraa from AXA US, where she served as Chief Actuary and Head of Product, Pricing and Underwriting for AXA’s Employee Benefits business. As part of the core team that brought AXA’s Employee Benefits business to market, she and her team were responsible for designing product specifications, determining pricing, and underwriting the products for the entire Employee Benefit product suite.
Previously, Turcotte was senior director and actuary of AXA’s Financial Protection & Wealth Management business, responsible for research and development to create life insurance products and entering new markets. Prior to joining AXA, Turcotte was a pricing specialist for Accident & Benefit Life at Chubb and also had prior roles at Prudential Financial and Guardian Life Insurance Company.
“There are no over 108 million Americans living within 200% of the Federal Poverty line. That translates to annual income of $22,000 or less for an individual” says Weiner “For a whole host of reasons, these households have historically been desperately underserved when it comes to insurance. Issues like affordability, access, product complexity but also cognitive bias and loss aversion keep individuals from getting the protection they need. Worse still, those insurers that have traditionally served this market are at best incredibly inefficient and at worst opaque in terms of their business practices. Both in terms of distribution and administration this inefficiency has historically made it impossible for them to viably deliver insurance products for less than a 10$/month premium – which is where you need to be to really support the mass market. We strongly believe that there is an enormous social need and a huge business opportunity to use our mobile native platform to deliver LMI households truly inclusive and value based insurance products. Amanda is a further guarantee for us to ensure that we consistently deliver on our commitment to provide affordability, relevance, transparency and reliability. That’s what being a Value Based Insurance company means.”
