All in one: The potential of SuperApps for insurers

Across Asia, SuperApps have proliferated in the last decade because of their intertwinement with the daily lives and needs of people and businesses. Many of them started out as messaging and social media apps, then expanded into platforms that allowed users to hail a ride, order groceries, split the restaurant bill with friends − and even offer banking and financial services such as insurance, investment and money remittance.

Rather than downloading a plethora of individual apps, SuperApp users have become accustomed to finding everything they need in one place. As Karsten Schmitt, Head of Business Development at German IT consultancy Adesso, explains: “SuperApps are platforms on which many individual applications or micro-services are available under one roof − like a large marketplace. Where you might otherwise have a taxi app, a payment app and a fitness app on your smartphone, with SuperApps there is only one. The benefit of having all services available on one platform is that all functions are interconnected. So if I do something in one micro-app, the others know about it, too, meaning more − and smarter − data than can best serve its users.”

While SuperApps haven’t yet proliferated in the West, the Covid-19 pandemic moved much of our world online. It led to a surge in e-commerce and digitalised services − with consumers becoming accustomed to shopping, paying their bills, receiving services and hailing a ride online − and made a stronger case for apps that could do all these things.

Potential for insurers

Popular consumer apps in North America and Europe have started to expand beyond their core services: Major ride-hailing apps have now started offering marketplaces for food, clothes and home goods, in addition to health-related services. Payment providers are consolidating payment and shopping services on one platform. London-based Revolut − best-known as a digital bank and digital-first credit card startup − is following a similar path.

Revolut’s vision is to become “a one-stop app for all things related to money, powered through our SuperApp,” says Wiktor Stopa, Head of Growth, Western Europe, at Revolut. Finance-focused providers like Revolut may hold an advantage because payment services are at the core of every all-in-one platform. As Adesso’s Schmitt explains: “Without a payment function, there would be no SuperApp. It’s the basis for everything customers want to do digitally and quickly, and it’s how providers of micro-services earn money.”

According to Schmitt, SuperApps also have an important role to play as “a new distribution channel for insurers and insurtechs.” Revolut’s primary business is banking services for personal and business customers − from payment services and credit cards to currency exchange and insurance. The company partners with insurers to provide unique products tailored to its users. For instance, it joined forces with a Belgium-based insurtech to create a travel insurance product that allows clients to cancel their trips for any reason and receive 70-100% of their payment back. Revolut’s insurance offerings are bundled with its credit card plans, designed to be easily accessible, and include coverage for event cancellation, trips and travel, car rental, winter sports, purchase and refund guarantees, and civil liability. 

For insurers, the promise lies in SuperApps’ reams of customer data that offer valuable insight on consumer habits and needs. Schmitt says that SuperApps which log customers’ exercise and shopping habits could feed real-time data to insurers that lets them improve their policies − providing an extended warranty for a customer that has just purchased a new product, for instance.

The future of SuperApps in the West

For fintech-first platforms that are vying to grow into a SuperApp, leveraging new technology to find new ways of servicing users is key. Revolut has recently launched an automated robo-adviser that allows clients to build a stock portfolio in a matter of minutes.

The company is also keeping tabs on SuperApps in other regions including Asia that have been able to develop large-scale, functional ecosystems. “There are many things to be inspired by,” explains Stopa, “in terms of their data usage, social tools integration, growth strategies and more.”

Summing up, Karsten Schmitt has no doubt: “The market for SuperApps exists. And big data and smart data are the tickets to this world.”