Grab Works with China’s Insurtech Giant to Offer Insurance by Mid 2019
by Fintech News Singapore January 16, 2019Grab announced that it’s partnering up with ZhongAn, one of the biggest insurtech drivers in China, to establish a joint venture company for the digital insurance distribution business in Southeast Asia.
The goal is to deliver a digital insurance marketplace for products in a range of categories with lower premiums, directly on the Grab app. The joint venture will collaborate with global insurance partners to develop products tailored for the Southeast Asian lifestyle.
As part of the agreement, ZA International, the entity for overseas business development under ZhongAn, will bring technical assets to build the platform and insight into internet ecosystems to the joint venture. Grab will launch the digital insurance platform through its mobile app and tap into its wide user base and insights to deliver customised insurance products to millions of users.
The platform will first launch in Singapore in the first half of 2019, before being rolled out in other markets. One of its stated goals is to offer insurance products through mobile phones for populations that are uninsured and underinsured.
Users would be able to browse through the Grab app for insurance without going through an agent or broker. The hope is that their mobile app would address some usual pain points of getting insurance, like insurance discovery and unaffordable premiums, while allowing users to add automatic deductions from GrabPay as another payment option.
Grab will start off by offering drivers’ insurance products to its drivers in Singapore, protecting them from loss of income from illness or accident.
The move into insurance is part of Grab’s play for markets outside of ride-hailing, and a facet of the company’s Grab Financial venture that last year, saw the announcement of cross-border remittance services across different Southeast Asian markets.
Featured image via NUS Enterprise
