 The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Matthias de Ferrieres, the CEO at Wellnex, about the current InsurTech hype and what academic research says about it. Matthias holds a PhD in Entrepreneurial economics and published a dissertation with the title: “The Rise of the Digital Economy: Estimating the Impact of a New Generation of Entrepreneurs as Disruptive Entrants in the Insurance Industry in Singapore”. The gap is not about the insurance per se, but about creating a better value propositions linked to the insurance industry. Matthias de Ferrieres explains in which way Wellnex responds to this value proposition: "Wellnex is like a pre-type of concierge on that by invitation only. Financial advisor are paying me to be able to give that free concierge or to their customer, to their leads, to their clients, okay, to their insured to their policyholder. So financial advisor, again, are my clients. They are paying me a fixed summons per year, to be able to generate leads, and they have a reason to create a leads to invite someone for a webinar or seminar, to push them to go for a screening to get home services. Because it will be free for the customer. And they’re able to collect that as a financial adviser. And the insured is happy, because he has a free membership, where he can get health care service, up to 60% discount, he can get access to concierge that will help them to do to fix their garden, their their air conditioning, I mean any service, you name it. And this will be paid by the financial advisor. So the question now is why it works. Wellnex has a very specific business model. A business model that makes people pay for what they get. The model is not design around commission, charge on transaction or something similar.  Talking about Venture Capital and entrepreneurship, Matthias de Ferrieres highlighted that first, not everyone can do what he does, because, he started with the support of AXA. Matthias de Ferrieres justified that he cannot raise money, because of his attitude, his personality which dont fit with the world of Fund Raising.
Also not everyone can can start from scratch because you need a minimum investment and try out. But the beauty of one you don’t have funding is you don’t have the same pressure. By not raising money, Matthias de Ferrieres confirms that he does not have the pressure other may have. For instance, he can can test and learn, he can adjust extremely fast without justifying to anyone else, why he is doing something. Should be attached ot a VC, you need to spend a lot of time and energy to explain to justify why you are doing some things this way and not the other way. In addition most of the times those VCs have the same breed the same way of thinking than any other industry or VCs for the industry. Venture capitalists believe that a good startup is a company that demonstrate tit can acquire more clicks, more members, more time on the app. Revenue is often second. Yet, in insurance such model does not work. Matthias de Ferrieres concluded that the power of Wellnex is the team and the fact that we are independent because it did not raise money and it has a profitable. business.  at The Ortus Club - Executive Knowledge Sharing, Matthias de Ferrieres, CEO of My-Insurer Pte Ltd and Wellnex moderated a lunch of Insurance Experts from different Incumbents (Chubb GREAT EASTERN Prudential Assurance Company Singapore QBE Insurance Allianz Insurance Singapore DirectAsia Insurance ) and Insurtechs (Ancileo Igloo ) sponsored by Stripe. People of all ages are now looking at protection and health needs with renewed interest, resulting in rising demand. The future looks filled with promise, but caution is advised for both consumers and providers. Leaders came together at LeVeL33 Pte Ltd in Singapore for a roundtable discussion on ‘The new face of insurance: Navigating uncharted territory’.
And the conclusion strikes. The participants did not hesitate to point out that:
Matthias de Ferrieres highlighted that it is always great to be given the opportunity to moderate a table of experts openly, with no restriction and with the opportunity to share frankly what we have in mind, even if it may not please everyone.  Matthias de Ferrieres, CEO of WELLNEX joined Asia InsurTech Podcast with fellow entrepreneurs to share about the challenges of innovation in the insurance industry. WELLNEX strives to make a difference in a very conservative environment that needs like any other industry to change, transform itself and become customer centric. WELLNEX is all designed around, for and dedicated to that customer. Matthias de Ferrieres engaged into a controversial discussion with Nicolas Faquet , and Gordon Tay on the difficulties of deploying sustainable solutions in the insurance industry. The three, moderated by Michael Waitze for Asia InsurTech Podcast , shared about the challenges to successfully change an obsolete and slow to move industry. Conservative yet monopolistic incumbents, drastic and complex regulations, product poor value perceptions, and consumer even poorer willingness to pay make extremely difficult insurtechs to truly innovate and even more difficult to sustain despite over funding by VCs.  In partnership with InsureTech Connect (ITC) Asia, we recorded a podcast panel with Gordon Tay, the Co-founder of SurerSG,
Matthias de Ferrieres the founder and CEO of WELLNEX , and Nicolas Faquet, the founder and CEO of Roojai. 2021 has been a record year for InsurTech, however, we have seen very little evidence of profitability yet. What are the challenges when starting an InsurTech startup and how important is sustainability in a VC world? My-Insurer & Wellnex participates in Health Prevention in Singapore with Monthly Health Talk.2/24/2022
Every month, Wellnex team organizes webinar and talk to incentive its members and Financial Advisor Clients on good health prevention. In October, Wellnex invited Doctor to come down to discuss about Breast Cancer prevention, while in November, they talked about Prostate Cancer. In December, it was all about Allergies and how to test if our members are allergic or not! January, we set a webinar on Mental illnesses with few clinics that participated in sharing their views on the danger of burn out and other work issues. This month, the Wellnex team invited Singhealth and Singapore General Hospital to talk about diabetes.  Wellnex invited Dr Lim Weiying to come and speak about diabetes ! Diabetes Mellitus prevalence is increasing locally and worldwide. The Ministry of Health Singapore declared war on diabetes in year 2016. This talk will cover the different types of diabetes mellitus, the potential associated complications, and management strategies. Dr Lim Weiying is graduated from National University of Singapore obtained her M.Med (Internal Medicine) and MRCP (UK) in 2011. She is currently a Consultant in the Department of Endocrinology at Singapore General Hospital. She runs the Joint Clinic for Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (JCGD) clinic and has an interest in Obstetrics Medicine/ Endocrinology conditions in pregnancy.  The International Diabetes Federation estimates a diabetes prevalence of 13.7% for the entire Singapore adult population (including foreigners). The prevalence of Diabetes in Singapore for citizens and permanent residents aged 18–69 rose from 7.3% in 1992 to 8.6% in 2018. Despite the Singapore's five-year war done by the different medical institutes against the disease, Diabetes has not made a dent in reducing the disease's prevalence rates. Worse, according to StraitsTimes, the prevalence of diabetes has shown a slight increase for the period of 2019 to 2020. Wellnex team will keep organizing such events as it is part of the DNA of start-ups and it is what our Clients, mainly Financial Advisors are asking for!
With the objective to show case with honesty our performance, My-Insurer Pte Ltd takes pride to share every month its numbers. Here are the results for the month of November: Overall we had a drop in numbers with slightly less new members, less Financial Advisors joining in and less usage of the app.
Other metrics for this month to consider:
  In the world of start-ups and especially in Insurtechs, very few agree to share their data:
Here below the profile of our members that have visited our app at least once a month!  |
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