Insurtech Lemonade has a pop at Europe
New York-based insurance platform Lemonade is coming to Europe – its first major market outside of the US.
“Great digital brands transcend borders”
Lemonade’s CEO Daniel Schreiber says the company has “no intention of stopping at water’s edge” and “great digital brands transcend borders”.
In more pragmatic terms, he says Europe is one of the largest insurance markets globally, and is home to the two largest insurers worldwide – AXA and Allianz. (Both are investors in Lemonade.)
Although he is aware of upsetting investors and adds: “We’re kinda hoping they’ll see our European launch as a boost to their investment, rather than as the challenge to their business we hope it becomes.”
These are early days but it will be interesting to see how it carves out some space in a very crowded European market. Some rivals we recently reported on include Anorak, Aviva and Munich Re. There are many more.
Anyway, the firm likes to be different because back in May it brought more fizz to the insurance sector by throwing out the traditional policy and creating “Policy 2.0”.
That ambition included a shorter policy, a digital touch and an end to antiquated English.
It also made up with German company ONE Insurance, its parent company wefox, and founder Julian Teicke.
As reported in June, Lemonade filed a lawsuit against them. The complaint was filed in the US District Court Southern District of NY, and it claims that ONE was the product of reverse-engineering by wefox.
Lemonade claimed wefox was “infringing Lemonade’s intellectual property, violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and breaching its contractual obligations to Lemonade not to ‘copy content… to provide any service that is competitive… or to… create derivative works’”.
However, love and happiness reigned as they made up in August.
On LinkedIn, Teicke said at that time: “Here’s the bottom line: Lemonade created something truly revolutionary, and their innovation inspired many in our industry – including myself. There’s a fine line between inspiration and imitation, and we acknowledge that Lemonade’s perspective is that we crossed it in some parts.
“While ONE has many unique features, I’m committed to addressing this concern of Lemonade. To that end, ONE will immediately undertake a redesign of elements in the app, website and marketing material that are similar to Lemonade. I am looking forward to putting this conflict aside and to exploring possibilities for cooperation in the future.”
