Modern, commercial insurance can be traced back to the Great Fire of London in 1666, after seeing the destruction of the fires, Nicholas Bardon created the first fire insurance company for houses and buildings. Obviously the insurance industry has evolved a long way since then, but the industry is still lagging behind in its ability to provide the best customer experience. Aventus Platform is the plug-in-play solution that allows insurers to create policies and automatically give quotes by asking just a few questions. This platform is highly customizable, and its low-code development features allows operators to add tailored features to the platform, providing functionality to process midterm adjustments, cancellations, billings, and renewals.
London TechWatch interviewed CEO Peter Goodman to discover how the Aventus Platform improves the efficiency of the insurance policy process. Goodman sold his first insurance company, Homelyfe, to focus on scaling Aventus, which has just raised its first round of funding since formally launching seven months ago.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
A £2.6M Seed investment led by Outward VC and Notion Capital with participation from TriplePoint and Downing Ventures.
Tell us about the product or service does Aventus offer.
Aventus is a London-based B2B insurtech business and insurance operating system. Its modular Insurance Operating System, allows insurers to create policies and automatically quote and bind in under a minute, asking minimal questions. In addition to improving customer experience, the system drives greater efficiencies for insurers by combining policy administration and CRM in one place, whilst leveraging multiple data sources to deliver quotes at speed and automate bordereaux and binder management.
For insurers, many of the best in class technologies for distribution, marketing, customer relationship management and payments lack “insurance” specific features. The Aventus operating system bridges that gap so that insurers – whether incumbent or startup – can innovate faster, drive up premium revenue, drive down their technology costs and create a seamless buying experience for any insurance line, in any digital environment, at start-up speed. It allows insurers to quickly and affordably innovate their products and distribution channels in a world where consumers now take real-time accessibility and convenience for granted. Aventus has been a major success story for the insurance Homelyfe brand and now other insurers, MGAs and brokers are accessing the same affordable benefits.
What inspired the start of Aventus?
Aventus was born after struggling to find suitable technology for my first insurance venture, home insurer Homelyfe, so my team and I created the software as a service (SaaS) model that underpins Aventus. The technology soon began to attract wider industry attention and recognition with other insurers in the market. At that point I pivoted my focus from the B2C world of Homelyfe to concentrate on selling the operating system B2B under the Aventus brand. Aventus formally launched seven months ago.
How is Aventus different?
Aventus’s modular Insurance Operating System, allows insurers to create policies and automatically quote and bind in under a minute, asking minimal questions. Aventus is also API driven which is a real point of difference, meaning it can plug and play and integrate with other systems; it’s not about ripping out and replacing – it’s about improving insurance.
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What market you are targeting and how big is it?
Our target market is the global small to medium-sized insurers, MGAs (Managing General Agents) and specialist brokers who don’t have the enormous IT budgets of the big insurers but are big enough in terms of distribution capability to benefit from the single customer view operating system. Aventus is particularly effective for long-tail niche or schemes business, which has traditionally been underserviced in terms of technology, but Aventus can provide new distribution opportunities, enabling better up-sell to customers via a consolidated view.
What’s your business model?
In order to deliver for our target market, the pricing needs to be about creating longevity and not charging large sums upfront. By charging cost-effective licence fees and a small % of written premium, it enables the partnership to scale collectively. The other important element to the business model is that updates of the system are included in the licence fees and are not additional costs.
Who do you consider to be your main competitors?
The main competitor we see is “do nothing”. A lot of companies are on legacy systems; they are very keen to change but stuck in the cycle of not improving their technology through fear.
What was the funding process like?
Funding is never easy, but it takes time and it is important to make sure that the investors are the right investors for the stage of business.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Time. Raising capital takes significant time and focus from the leadership that is also having to run the business day-to-day.
Communication. The key drivers for the business and investors are often different.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
I know they are attracted by repeat founders and propositions which solve significant pain points. They know that the insurance experience will rapidly shift to a more consumer-centric designed set of propositions, and those insurers who nail it, will win big.
It’s the underlying technologies like Aventus that will be the enabler of this.
They know that the insurance experience will rapidly shift to a more consumer-centric designed set of propositions, and those insurers who nail it, will win big.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
The latest investment injection will allow us to scale up the business with a focus on sales and people. That growth is already underway. We have also just announced the sale of the Homelyfe brand, allowing us to focus on the Aventus business.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
It is a question of maintaining a balance. Raising funding is hard and time-consuming, but keep focused on delivering your day to day business.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Aventus is now in a phase of customer growth and delivery and changing the way that insurance companies think about their technology stacks.
What is your favorite restaurant in London?
Roka in Charlotte St has for a long time been my ‘go-to’. The food, the staff, and the atmosphere are second to none.
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