Insurance Business were interested in Equipsme’s roots, and Matthew is clear it’s always been about disrupting the status quo. Speaking in the article, Matthew said: “Equipsme came about as a result of us looking at the health insurance market and finding it old, stagnant and complacent. Having been an insurer myself, I can say that insurers tend only to innovate when something’s going wrong. Where there isn’t a loss ratio driving the need to do better, there’s not much innovation.”
More options
For Matthew, it’s always been about helping companies do more for MORE of their people, and targeting businesses who maybe haven’t had health insurance before or have only had it for a few people. It’s all about offering choice, and options to support real people in real world jobs.
He explained: “At the end of the day your people are your business. A bakery, for example, would rely on their van driver to get their orders out. You insure the vehicle so why wouldn’t you buy insurance to get the driver in front of a physiotherapist in two days if they hurt their knee?”
While the initial focus was on solutions for SMEs, that remit has very quickly extended, with demand soaring from larger businesses post-pandemic and mid-NHS crisis. Now Equipsme has customers of all shapes and sizes, across all sectors.
Different distribution
Matthew goes on to talk about making a product that was so simple it could be bought directly, by smaller HR teams without health insurance experience. It was also designed to be something non-specialist general brokers could offer to their clients, adding extra value.
Consolidation in the market has made that objective more pertinent than ever. In the article, Matthew added: “We didn’t build this to be disintermediated at all. We built it to allow non-medical specialist brokers to offer it to their customers. When you think about the general insurance broker, they’ve probably got two or three policies with their clients, and they’re the button that’s pushed when those clients want insurance advice – whether it’s life insurance or medical insurance, or their general insurance needs.”
You can read the full, original article on the Insurance Business website here.
