How can we force talented engineers to work for startups in common areas when more exciting companies are actively paying and hiring? Here’s the answer from one insurance startup from Poland called Ominimo: It makes wages competitive, but more importantly, it gives those engineers a license to apply talent and reinvent the workings of the field.
Starting with a budget that was bootstrapped just 12 months ago, Ominomo believes that it has found another better approach to understanding and pricing risk. The company says that 300,000 policies have been registered in Hungary’s first market, and is already growing profitably. Currently, I am receiving the first external investment from my strategic supporter, Zurich Insurance Group, to promote the next stage of my life.
TechCrunch understands from sources that Zurich has invested 10 million euros (approximately $11 million) in 5% of the company, valueating Ominimo at 200 million euros ($220 million). Neither Ominimo nor Zurich commented on the investment amount, but both confirmed the ratings.
Ominimo raised money when former incumbent Wefox, one of Europe’s most well-known and well-known insurance startups, sold a portion of the business and earned lifeline funds and floated.
It is not only a story of attention on how to grow your insurance business, but also a clear opportunity. Perhaps the reason why Wefox grew so quickly was due to market demand (from both consumers and investors) if only its demand wave could be surfed without being wiped out.
Ominimo is already profitable in its current business, but it is definitely a modest effort. Today, Ominimo is active in one Hungary market, focusing on one type of insurance, in addition to consumer auto insurance. The plan is to replicate the model into more regions and categories. Will will expand into more than 10 new markets, using Zurich as a risk carrier, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands, and Ominimo will become a broker, especially the managing general agent. Ominimo initially focuses on car insurance, but plans to add property over time.
DUSAN KOMAR – Ominimo CEO, who co-founded the company with Dennis Weinbender (now Chief Price and Data Officer) and Laslo Horvath (CTO), saw the challenges the insurance industry faced directly while working for McInsey. He said the major insurance companies were stuck due to three main issues. A strict, legacy system that is difficult to use, if not impossible, to launch new services quickly and in new innovations such as AI-based pricing. The decision-making process at the company level is slow. and talent.
“Glorious software engineers and data scientists don’t dream of working for insurance companies,” he said.
Others, like McKinsey, are usually called to try and fix all three at once. He and his team have built a new product from scratch and said they will “hand over the code” to their insurance client. “It worked to some extent, but it wasn’t that perfect.
Then something inevitable came to life. Taking clues from the world of fintech and other insurance startups, Kommer and his two co-founders saw the opportunity to develop the product as their own company rather than as their clients. And that’s how Ominimo was born.
The heart of what Ominimo is doing is applying AI-based inferences about Big-Data analysis. When it comes to building and pricing insurance estimates, traditional insurers may use five or six key parameters: the age of a person, the economic bracket of a person, the type of vehicle, past driving history, and the location of the vehicle. New insurance companies may add 10 or 15 additional parameters.
“But there are some variables that aren’t really very important, and aren’t that clear,” Comer said. For example, he said that getting a vehicle license plate actually makes use of the database. “It’s interesting to see, for example, that the data shows a very strong correlation between the length of the car and the frequency of accidents while parked,” he said.
Ominimo takes all these details into consideration when calculating population density and more.
Of course, there are already many insurance startups in the market that promote AI use across the platform to improve backend decision-making and frontend customer experience. (It does the same with the presence of many startups on Fintech, a close sibling of insurance technology that claims to be built on AI.)
Comer’s response to this is that Ominimo’s track record speaks for itself. “I think what really matters is the performance in the market, so when you compare our performance to lemonade (the important competitor), you actually see the difference,” he said. He claimed that Ominimo’s “loss rate” is below the market average and that it already has a 7% market share in Hungary, the only country to be launched.
Like many neobanks in the market, fintech and insurance really have a lot in common, but many of the “new” insurance players in the market are creating a more modern user experience, reducing confusion under the hood.
“There is a difference between claiming to do data science from a risk assessment perspective and actually doing it,” he said. Many startup competitors have “focused on really good customer experiences, very great front-ends, very lean and intuitive journeys, but there wasn’t much under the hood.”
He argued that giving talent a place to do the work they want to do is how attractive and maintained they were. “There are eight medalists among the data science teams from the Olympics of Mathematics and Physics (a well-known competition in these fields),” he said. “These are truly amazing young minds and for the first time we can now unlock the full potential of them on a global scale.
That’s what attracted new strategic investors as well. This is looking for more diverse ways to bring about a new wave of customers.
“Expanding retailing to profitability is a key ambition for Zurich’s 2025-2027 cycle. As such, we are delighted with Da DiRekt’s distribution partnership with Ominimo. This will allow us to offer innovative auto insurance solutions, expand our retail customer base in Europe, and expand the market where Zurich already exists. “We are delighted to be strengthening our relationship with Ominimo’s minority shareholders.”