What inspired your decision to join CoverWallet?

Insurance for small businesses is a $100 billion per year market in the US. The opportunity to make an impact on this entire industry by building a best-in-class online experience was one of my main inspirations to join CoverWallet.

What has been your proudest accomplishment since joining CoverWallet?

I have been proud to help build our product and platform from scratch to support multiple business models around the globe. When I first joined, we had no customers, revenue, or partners. Over the last seven years, we have launched three different business models across four continents with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, our focus is to grow our global footprint in the SMB space and scale our platform to create a multibillion-dollar business within Aon.

How is AI impacting the insurance industry at large?

AI has a huge role to play in the industry by helping automate and streamline claims processing and customer service workflows, improve risk assessment and underwriting, and prevent fraud. This will help small business owners save time and reduce errors.

What are the biggest challenges insurance companies face today?

The increasing use of digital channels for purchasing, servicing, and managing policies has disrupted traditional insurance models. Insurance companies must embrace digital transformation to stay competitive in today's marketplace. Customers expect more personalised, on-demand, and seamless experiences. Insurance companies need to adapt to these changing expectations by developing new products, services, and experiences that meet customer needs.

What trends in small business insurance are you most excited about?

The first and most obvious is digitalisation. CoverWallet has been focused on providing a fully digital experience for small business owners to understand, buy, and manage their insurance needs. Second is cybersecurity, which is becoming an increasingly important concern. This provides a big opportunity for companies like CoverWallet to offer policies that help small businesses recover from cyberattacks or data breaches.

We're also excited about embedded insurance, as it's the next phase of growth for us. We know that in order to grow, we have to be at the right place and the right time for our customers. We believe building the right digital experience with the right partner will define success.

How do you approach new offerings, such as your recent collaboration with PayPal, to ensure you’re serving customers’ needs?

CoverWallet and Aon’s partnership with PayPal helps millions of small businesses in the US access insurance faster. Small business owners in the US are confronted with the challenge of selecting the most appropriate insurance for their business, and they may not have the time to research, shop for, and purchase insurance. As a result, many of these businesses are underinsured, meaning they do not have the proper insurance coverage to fully protect their business.

In the case of the PayPal collaboration, innovating at scale means addressing a previously underserved large market with a combined solution. This approach extends to a wider ethos within Aon to scale inventive breakthroughs that deliver results on behalf of clients.

How can the insurance and payments industries improve to deliver a better experience for small business owners?

Small business owners often do not have the time or resources to navigate complex insurance and payment processes. Insurers and payment providers should simplify their processes and make it easier for small business owners to understand and manage their accounts. This has been a key focus at CoverWallet and we have created a best-in-class solution for our customers in partnership with Stripe.

How has CoverWallet met the needs of businesses when it comes to payments offerings?

We’ve built our payments experience through our partnership with Stripe and our premium finance partner, which allows our customers to purchase policies in full or on an installment plan with just a few clicks. The workflows around payment failures, refunds, and reconciliations are fully automated through Stripe and premium finance partners’ APIs.

Can you share how Stripe integrates with CoverWallet and where you’re seeing the most value from Stripe?

We use Stripe Payments and Stripe Connect to streamline multi-party payment flows, meeting customer expectations for a smooth purchasing experience no matter what they are buying. Stripe Connect allows us to programmatically split every payment collected from the customer across multiple partners and vendors without any manual intervention. This has been a key to simplifying our back-end processes and allowing us to focus on providing exceptional service to customers.

How does Stripe enable CoverWallet to successfully conduct business across a number of markets?

Stripe significantly reduces complexity by providing a complete payments solution, such as gateway, processor, and merchant account. This allows us to implement our payment workflows within a few days in any country where Stripe is present.

We see our relationship with Stripe getting stronger over time as we increase our global footprint. There are a lot of opportunities for us to partner together to bring the best of Stripe and Aon to our customers.