“ As an insurtech , we ’ re not dealing with legacy . Everything is cloudbased and agile . If we see an opportunity in the marketplace , we can develop a product in a matter of weeks and have something launched in months rather than years ”
RICHARD KING FOUNDER AND CEO , TICKER
Is it better to specialise or generalise ? “ For Ticker , it ’ s about winning in niches where the average premium is high and there ’ s plenty of margin to soak up the additional data costs . By building specialised products , we can access the wider market with connected insurance .”
Is Ticker close to an underwriting profit ? “ We set ourselves the goal to achieve underwriting profits within the first three years . That ’ s an aggressive goal for any motor insurtech but we ’ re on target to achieve it .
If you look at our friends across the pond , some of the big US insurtechs are happy to see loss ratios north of 100 % in the early years . I don ’ t know of many capacity partners in the UK or Europe who would stomach that sort of loss for very long .”
What plans do you have for the next 12-18 months ? “ We ’ re about to start our Series B fundraise , which I hope to conclude by the end of Q1 .
Other than that , we ’ ll be hiring the best talent , building more sophisticated products and extracting valuable insights from the connected car data that flows into our data lake . On the product side , we have two new products due to be launched for low-mileage and convicted drivers , and three more will be launched during 2022 . We ’ re quite busy and focused .”
Could you sum up what gives Ticker the competitive advantage ? “ It ’ s the quality of the team .”
How are you working with Close Brothers ? “ We ’ ve worked with Close Brothers since the start , partnering with them for premium finance for our customers . As many of our policies have a high average premium , there ’ s quite a high uptake for paying monthly over annually . Close Brothers have been a great partner – they ’ re one of the most trusted names in the industry .”