Partners Life unfazed by Mosaic loss

Partners Life managing director Naomi Ballantyne says the collapse of an insurance tech start-up is a shame but not a major blow to her company.

Monday, June 11th 2018, 12:00PM 1 Comment

by Susan Edmunds

Mosaic was an insurtech firm that was intended to target the Gen Y insurance market.

A pilot, Volo, launched in 2016. It required no health checks or medical records and did not differentiate on whether someone was a smoker.

Pre-existing conditions were not covered.

The policies paid set amounts in cases of surgery, cancer, fractures, and temporary and permanent disability.

It was predicted in 2015, the same year it signed a deal with an Australian operator, that it would be turning over $14.3 million in revenue by 2020 and $6.7m in after-tax profit.

The business collapsed in May.

Mosaic's products were being underwritten by Partners Life and CoverMore. Partners was the biggest known creditor, owed $400,000.

Ballantyne said, if Mosaic had been successful with what it hoped to achieve it would have been a good thing in the market.

She said in 2015, when the relationship was first revealed, that it was not intended to compete with financial advisers but instead would cater to under-35-year-old clients, who would not otherwise access insurance.

She said the company knew that a direct platform selling insurance would not be enough to get young clients in, “no matter how sexy it was” without credit card or travel insurance on there as well to get people on to the site in the first place.

But she said she could see the potential. “They just never got there.”

She said Partners was owed “some money” because it had given Mosaic a commission advance to build its software, on the basis of what it was expected to sell.

“We knew there was a risk around that.”

She said the company could take security over the software but there was likely to be little value left in the business. “I’d rather not spend the money to get nothing.”

She said the products developed for Mosaic had potential to be used elsewhere, so it was not wasted.

Tags: Partners Life