Beema Insurance has announced that it is well underway in further expanding its portfolio of products to now include several innovative travel, home, and health insurance products alongside the company’s original car insurance.
Now celebrating two years of successful operations, Nicola Garelli, CEO of Beema Insurance, highlighted Beema’s "outstanding performance" and says that the company will build on its core competencies, while closely monitoring the needs of the market to ensure that they remain true to their vision of making insurance lovable. He says that it is full steam ahead for Beema, which has served over 34,000 customers since it launched its operations in 2019. Of these, 65 per cent were Beema Pay-per-kilometer customers in 2021. The success of this policy is what made Beema stand out at the Leaders in Fintech Awards 2021 by Entrepreneur Middle East, where they scooped up the award for 'Best Insurtech Solution 2021'.
Garelli also notes that the company has secured a 1.2 per cent market share – a figure that will undoubtedly increase as Beema has set some "very aggressive targets" for the next few years. "We expect to end this year on a very high note, and our aim is to keep the pace of our current momentum and grow our presence in the coming years. Our team is committed and ready to deliver on our new targets, while staying true to our aim of making insurance lovable by bringing people innovative products and customer experiences."
Looking back, Garelli notes that the success of various unique policies with Beema's customers, such as the Pay-per-kilometer car insurance, have set the roadmap for Beema's new product launches. "We are preparing to launch a home and home content protection insurance package, as well as a motor behavioural policy, which will further cement our position on the market. We have already launched it with a select group of customers, but we plan to have a wider launch for all our customers before the end of this year, and this will really be a game changer in how risk is considered and priced before the benefits are transferred to the customer."
Asked about the recent launch of the Beema app, Garelli says that the app was very well received by customers. "The app introduces a couple of very important elements: the first is that it provides a place to manage all your policies and see information on all insured products; the second is that it is a place where you can submit claims in a smart and efficient place; and lastly, it is a tool for us to monitor the behaviour of our customers and offer them specifically tailored products and rewards and incentives."
Garelli also says that Beema is excited about playing a key role when it comes to insurance, especially as travel restrictions ease across various geographies and travellers are more confident about booking holidays with their friends and family. "It is a very comprehensive travel insurance covering both inbound and outbound travel. Keeping the current situation with the pandemic in mind, it is also designed to cover any injuries and expenses that are related to Covid-19. From a technical point of view, it is one of the best coverage plans that you can get in the region."
Garelli recalls how Beema had to quickly adapt their operations significantly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The company had launched just a few months before Covid-19 disrupted industries and sectors across the global economy, and Beema had to take several steps to ensure the safety of their employees, while coming up with a way to continue their operations. “Many of our core market assumptions changed completely because of the pandemic; the market for insurance became more competitive, prices decreased, and the competition online became tougher, and in many cases, almost irrational.”
He explains that many industry players did not use their digital channels "in a competent way", and as a result they ended up "creating a lot of noise and inefficiency."
“This is true, not just for insurance, but for many different industries, however insurance has a very specific dynamic – people just weren’t driving their cars during the lockdown and prices were already dropping with the increasing competition. Now, many competitors started offering further discounts in a very irrational way and the prices kept decreasing until June of this year. The amount of payments that insurance companies were paying to customers was also increasing and this put everyone in a tough position as it wasn’t sustainable,” he notes.
Looking at the state of the market today, Garelli says that there will be a lot of transformation in the coming six to seven months. "The entire insurance market will need to re-adapt to ensure that it can maintain financial sustainability when people return to their normal habits and the claims start increasing again, which is exactly what we have been observing in the last few months. I think that one of the factors that set us apart during the height of the pandemic was that Beema was very adaptable. We took change as a challenge and something that we were ready to embrace."
Asked about the ongoing transformation in the automotive industry revolving around green vehicles and technology, Garelli says that he is "very excited" about what the future will bring, especially as cities around the world continue looking into better sustainability solutions.
"Every time I see something that pushes towards a more sustainable future, I genuinely enjoy it,” he says. “Green vehicle technology, such as electric cars, are a growing trend across the world. Some cities have been faster to adapt the technology than other, but that is because of various unique challenges that they have in terms of infrastructure and regulations. The Middle East has been slower to adopt the electric vehicle trend, but this is something that we will see picking up."
He also notes that the move towards more sustainable and autonomous forms of transport will definitely have an impact on the insurance sector in terms of the type and price of insurance policies, as well as how insurance companies consider risk. "We already have a very good policy for electric vehicles that we will expand upon as more of such vehicles are used on the roads. There are still some challenges that we have to take into account such as spare parts not being readily available, but the industry is working together collectively to deal with such issues. I feel that the industry is very committed to this transformation."
For more information please visit : https://www.beema.ae/en/