Apollo
APOLLO is a digital insurance company dedicated entirely to entrepreneurs. Their cloud-based Exchange launched in 2019 and now offers the largest selection of online insurance for small businesses in Canada. APOLLO recently launched renters insurance and continue to rapidly expand the online product offering. The unique value proposition reduces what can commonly be a friction-filled, weeks-long process with many human touch points into a simple, immediate experience. Five minutes is all it takes for entrepreneurs to get covered, 24/7, from anywhere and any device. As COVID has forced the entire insurance industry online, APOLLO empowers insurance brokers, underwriters, and entrepreneurs to engage together for an entirely digital transaction.
The biggest competitor to APOLLO is the traditional workflows of insurance brokerages and insurance company underwriting processes. However, the advantage APOLLO has is in offering the broker significant product variety and instantaneous service. As insurance carriers have specific risk appetites and require in house expertise to underwrite policies, they only offer specific products for brokers to choose from. This is a big pain point for insurance brokers looking to serve their small business clients.
For independent insurance brokers in Canada, Apollo’s technology comes at a particularly good time. Brokers and insurance salespeople from any insurance Canadian brokerage can log in and place a policy on behalf of their client in a matter of minutes, avoiding their own pain points in soliciting quotes from underwriters. The insurance market in Canada is hardening, meaning that insurance companies are more hesitant than ever to accept new clients, resulting in many smaller brokerages facing an uphill battle to get insurance for their small business clients. APOLLO offers those small independent brokerages, products that they may not be able to easily get elsewhere.
Beyond that, Apollo saves Canadian business owners a great deal of time and money by offering the best in class insurance products at a fraction of the cost and time.
Traction
The insurance industry is paying close attention to Apollo, particularly in the past year. In 2019, Apollo was mentioned over 100 times in international industry press and beyond — including mentions in Betakit, BC Business, Business in Vancouver, and Yahoo! Finance. APOLLO was named Innovator of the Year at the 2019 Insurance Business Canada Awards in Toronto.
Apollo has partnered with several insurance carriers to supply products, working with them to translate traditional paper-based applications to a digital format. Those products are distributed to the end consumer through a growing network of Apollo broker partners.
Apollo continues to add new carrier partners, digital products from those carriers, and broker partners to utilize their technology. There are currently over 500 classes of small businesses that are able to purchase insurance digitally. Over 250 brokerage firms are signed up with significant growth opportunities into the massive Insurance landscape. Each of those users represents an average $500,000 in premium for their book of business, which they have the opportunity to capture, and those are just existing users. If they continue to capture more of that value from each broker user, and the users they continue to onboard, Apollo will continue to be successful. Insurance is one of the largest industries in the world and insurtech is a great place for investment capital. Property, casualty, and life insurance premiums amount to approximately $5 trillion globally and account for 11% of gross domestic product in the United States. APOLLO has lots of significant opportunities ahead.
Team
APOLLO has assembled a small but impactful team, attracting both insurance industry veterans who are eager to revolutionize the industry and tech leaders who see the opportunity to create efficiencies in the global insurance supply chain.
Jeff McCann, Cofounder, CEO – Nominated for CEO of the year at the Insurance Business Awards 2019.
David Dyck, Cofounder, Head of Marketing & PR
Imran Jiwa, Head of Finance
Margo Lyons, Head of Broker Distribution
Drew Green, Cofounder and Chairman of the Board – current CEO of INDOCHINO
Funding
Apollo is always evaluating potential capital partners to accelerate its mission to be the most broker centric insurance wholesaler in the world. They recently closed a Seed financing and are looking ahead for potential Series A partners.
Revenue Model
Apollo takes insurance products from carriers, digitizes it for distribution to brokers on the Apollo Exchange platform, and facilitates payment processing so all accounts are settled in real time. In exchange, Apollo earns a recurring transaction fee. This is particularly attractive considering that commercial insurance typically renews at a 90% retention rate annually, meaning that a majority of revenue they brought in last year will persist in the coming years, on top of any new revenue.
Details
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