Challenger bank Starling Bank is now offering on demand insurance for your smartphone. According to Starling, users may purchase insurance from so-sure via the Starling app marketplace.
Insurtech so-sure is said to offer fast, reliable and simple mobile phone insurance in a market that is often seen as opaque. so-sure declines less than 4% of claims – far lower than the traditional insurance industry.
so-sure also has an interesting spin on their service with “social insurance.” The concept allows customers to connect their policy with friends and family members who also have a policy with so-sure. As long as no one you are connected to makes a claim, the customer will get up to 80% of their premium back at the end of the policy year. Obviously there is a significant incentive for everyone not to have to use the insurance policy.
Starling already has existing partnerships with pension provider PensionBee, digital investing services Wealthsimple and Wealthify, mortgage broker Habito, travel insurance provider Kasko, life insurance provider Anorak, and receipts and loyalty partner Flux. The digital bank has taken a strategic approach of not providing all types of services but rather to create a central location for users to select from a buffet of digital offerings. Starling believes this will help differentiate their bank from other digital banking services. Starling says they will have 25 marketplace partners by the end of the year.
“Through our Marketplace, we want to enable our customers to manage their whole financial life in one place,” says Megan Caywood, Chief Platform Officer at Starling Bank. “As a mobile only bank, we understand the need for affordable mobile phone insurance, so partnering with so-sure was a natural fit. so-sure share our ethos of putting the customer first and are another example of our commitment to partnering with disruptors that are working to improve customers lives through intuitive products and fair and transparent pricing.”
