Joburg startup Pineapple secures R5.2 million to shake up insurance in SA

Pineapple, an insurtech startup based in Johannesburg, has secured seed funding of R5.2 million from Lireas Holdings, the strategic investment arm of Hannover-Re Group Africa, in return for a minority shareholding.

Formerly Amyti, Pineapple claims to be South Africa’s first peer-to-peer insurer and the world’s first fully-functioning decentralised insurer.

It said that the funding will assist the company in bringing its insurance offering to market.

Pineapple said it aims to change the way insurance is done, starting with the mechanics of the actual business model.

It said that today’s insurance companies only provide R36 value for every R100 premium paid, due to excessive expense lines, unfair profiting and an abundance of fraud.

The group said it wants to remove the conflict of interest in insurance by returning all unused premium back to the hands of the consumer.

“Currently, every claim an insurer denies adds to their bottom line. This is an inherent conflict of interest whereby the provider of the service is actually incentivised to not follow through on their promise.”

It also wants to provide complete transparency – showing you exactly where your premiums go and how they are used.

The group also wants to “reintroduce affinity into insurance”.

“Connect with friends, family, trusted acquaintances to stop paying for fraudsters and bad risks who are currently ruining the insurance value chain. This also removes the need for the insurer to treat you like a criminal when you submit a claim,” it said.

Pineapple said it has built a world’s first in achieving a flexible, scalable and decentralized peer-to-peer insurer that provides fully fledged insurance coverage to its members.

The group’s technology includes AI, MongoDB and ReactNative with a block-chain integration coming soon.

“Our true innovation of creating a decentralized peer-to-peer insurer is only as good as how well we can deliver that business model to our users. This drives us to be absolutely meticulous when it comes to our user experience in order to minimize the friction of getting insured,” said Pineapple co-founder Matthew Elan Smith.

Pineapple said it will soon be available on both the Play store and Apple app Store. Pineapple will allow Android or IOS smartphone users to instantly insure items they hold near and dear in a fair, rewarding and friction-less method.

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