claimBuddy

Why did you start your start-up, which problem do you address and how do you solve it?

In the course of digitalisation, the insurance industry is facing great challenges. At present, claims are mainly submitted to the policyholder via paper or PDF forms and possibly online entry masks, which are complex and difficult to understand.

Our interactive chatbot asks only the most necessary questions to quickly and understand the claim. The policyholder can upload photos of the claim or corresponding documents. We then assess the damage using artificial intelligence (especially image recognition). After successful assessment of the monetary value, the policyholder receives a payout proposal with the aim of settling the claim immediately.

In addition to image recognition, we use other technologies such as location determination (Google Maps) and analysis of weather data to check the plausibility of the loss. We can generate the data in various output formats such as PDF, XML, BiPro as e-mail attachments and send them to the insurer or integrate our solution into the company's own insurance software.

How did you get the idea to found your start-up?

Our CEO Amin had a claim that was quite complex to report and then took several weeks to settle. He felt that this process should be much faster with digitalization.

What is special about your business model, what do you do differently?

By using claimBuddy, both the policyholders and the insurance companies benefit. The policyholder benefits from time savings of up to 99 percent. With claimBuddy it is possible to report and fully document the damage within minutes and to settle the claim. Compared to the standard process there is no further correspondence and inquiries in case of missing documents. Today, these requests have to be made by the agent or an employee via e-mail. As a result, the policyholder receives his money faster and his satisfaction increases.

The insurance companies save costs by automating the processes. Experience shows that automated claim reporting and settlement can save up to 20-30 minutes per claim. These time savings can be scaled to the corresponding loss amounts. In addition, our solution is easily scalable to the requirements of insurers in the case of major events that cause many claims at once.

What was the most valuable advice someone gave you during your start-up phase?

In the very early stages, our investor told us to always trust our guts before making difficult decisions. That was pretty good advice and now he is our investor.

What has been your biggest success so far?

We were able to win a German insurance company from Hannover as our first client.

What is the next challenge for you?

After the successful entry into the German market, we are planning to expand into the European market by starting with the German speaking countries in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The expansion is planned for 2020 at the earliest.

Where did you get to know each other?

Amin and Christoph met at the Institute for Risk and Insurance at Leibniz University in Hanover. Amin was a working student and responsible for IT support at the institute and Christoph was a researcher. We met our third team member, Christian, at a Lean Startup competition at the end of 2016 in Hannover. All in all our team sees the diversity of our skills and abilities as a great chance to establish the long-term success of claimBuddy.

Where do you see your startup in 3 years?

claimBuddy will be very well known in Europe and will be used by 5-10 percent of insurance companies.

Do you have an office cat/dog/turtle...?

Our co-founder Christoph has a cute little dog named Joey. He is an integral part of our team, responsible for keeping the office happy and for us coming out of the office regularly to walk him.

If an investor gave you 500,000 euros, what would you do with the money?

The 500,000 euros will be used to finance product development and to improve our AI, in particular the claims review mechanism and the rating algorithm, to make claimBuddy more beneficial and convenient for policyholders and businesses.