Podcast #29 — Talking Insurtech with Eugeni Morales

In itnig’s Podcast #29 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig speaks with Eugeni Morales about his experience in the Insurtech and Proptech business. Eugeni is one of our partners at Factorial and someone we have the pleasure of working with day by day.

At itnig every Friday we sit down to talk with interesting people whom we meet throughout the week and we make a podcast (in Spanish) out of our conversations. You can listen to it on iTunes, subscribe to our channel on Youtube or enjoy it through iVoox.

For this Podcast #29 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig and Eugeni Morales come together to talk about the beginning of his career in Insurtech, what he has learned, how digitalization has shaped the sector and how he got involved with Factorial.

Eugeni, how did you get started in the world of insurance?

I had the chance that my family already had small businesses. I started to study engineering and straight out of college worked for a multinational company. After a few months I realized that this was not what I was looking for and started to work in a family business dedicated to insurance for medical sector. Eventually we sold the company to insurance executives and after this first experience in entrepreneurship I continued to create another business in the insurance sector.

In 2003 / 2004 I was leading a medical services business oriented to companies and other businesses connected to this. We had about 200 employees and revenues of 6 million Euros facilitating medical services to construction firms for example.

What are the margins in such a business?

When you work for insurance companies the margins are very small, whereas in the public sector you can reach a higher margin. All in all however it was very complicated work because you had a high costs for overheads for the doctors. In the end we sold the company.

Why did you decide to sell if the business was working for you?

It was a lot of work with high labor risk for a low margin. At that age, I preferred to have a less labor intensive business. We sold the company and I decided to go into the real estate sector. After living through the real estate crisis, I took a break in 2010 to travel the world and recharge.

Upon coming back to Barcelona I started again. This time I had the idea to start online. Not that I knew anything about Internet but I thought there were many opportunities. That’s when the idea of Insurtech started taking form.

The first online company I created was an insurance information portal — where you as a user could have access to all insurances you have, see the costs and compare them and contract new / switch insurances right through the platform. An insurance comparison if you will.

This business is where I lost the most money in my life. It did not work — I did not execute it well and the market was not ready.

The insurance sector is a very regulated business. You cannot apply lean or startup methodologies of trial and error if you are in such a regulated space. Regulations condition your philosophy of trial & error.

What went wrong? What was your go-to market plan?

I dedicated a lot of time to create the product and little time to think about what the user would want. Our time to market was delayed a lot because we needed to reach agreements with insurance companies. When we finally launched, the margin time we had to interact with the market, to have traction was really short.

We were an aggregator of insurance policies as app. For a lot of users it was the first time they knew how much they were spending on insurance, which insurance they had contracted and a chance to compare them.

What was your business model?

We worked as brokers, with a commission based on all insurances. However, the insurance companies at that time were not so interested in digital world. Now of course this has changed and they are investing a lot online.

From what I learned here new businesses emerged and I maintained a good relationships with an international broker looking at what online business can grow, what opportunities there are for brokers.

So what kind of projects do you do in Insurtech?

Different products like insurance cancellation for travel companies like Waynabox, Real Estate sector or even all kind of Classified sites like for example Wallapop.

We are not looking for distribution but rather new business models for insurances in the digital space. Where there is insecurity between buyer and seller, we can create an insurance product dedicated to bridge this gap.

An exempla is the fintech startup Marketpay. You buy a product from someone far away and you don’t want to go to physically pick it up and check it is in good conditions. We can do logistics and an insurance for warranty of product for you.

We work with escrow payments on the platform. The buyer pays for the product, the company keeps the money until product is received and validated by the buyer. Only once the product is checked, is the money released to the seller. If it turns out that the product does not work in the limit of 30 or 60 days, the product is returned — repaired or the money is reimbursed partially. We are part of this operational flow of Marketpay — creating a new insurance product that did not exist before.

Without escrow, without validation by the buyer this would be impossible.

In this way, I look for startups where we can test new products like this — before bringing it to a much bigger customer.

A bigger customer like Airbnb?

Yes, for example.

We created an insurance that covers the damage a visitor might leave in your house. The traveller instead of leaving a deposit, could pay a premium that covers the damage. That could be an option, substitution the deposit for a premium (which will never be recovered). There is a friction between traveler and renter. Renters needed to have money in cash- that makes it more complicated and we think that in this case for example an insurance would be better.

Airbnb can make a margin off the premium, on a deposit Airbnb does not make anything.

What changes do you see in the business? Is there anything that surprised you lately?

The model that I most liked could be the one used by Marketpay, using escrow but some would consider this more Fintech than Insurtech. Another interesting project I recently saw in the US is a company offering to cover certain risks but instead of asking for a premium they ask for more data of their users. If you give us access to this data and the buyer, we’ll cover the risk. Substituting the insurance for data could be a possible future.

What about Factorial? You got to know Factorial in the very beginning and you decided to invest. Where did you see the opportunity?

The strong suites I saw were and are that technology has a high importance. There is a clear market necessity, brokers were already doing it (benefits), so there was an existing demand. The capacity to monetize was diversified not just insurance but through other products as well. The commission is small but the volume is high and the segment is growing. As there is more pressure on our social welfare system, young people are looking more and more for private insurance — if they can get benefits by going through their employer why would they not do it?

Another important part in my decision was itnig. Knowing that itnig is behind Factorial meant that I did not have to worry that the entrepreneur would get scared, it’s not the fist time they are doing it, they know how to build a business.

In general, what motivates you when investing?

I only invest if I know about the sector, if I can bring contacts and add value, if I see a strong team and an infrastructure like an incubator that gives more security, behind the startup.

If I don’t know anything about the space the startup is working in I don’t go in.

What are you planning to do int he next years?

I have some ideas to start a business in Real Estate. And for the other projects, where I have invested I look to contribute the most to make it a success like Factorial or Marketpay.


Listen to our podcast to learn more about Eugeni’s story. Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.

Podcast #22 Setting up and managing a sales team

Selling is pure adrenaline. The pressure we have in sales makes us feel alive.

In itnig’s Podcast #22 we talk about all things sales: How to close a deal, what motivates a sales professional and the way to setup and manage a sales team.

At itnig every Friday we sit down to talk with interesting people whom we meet throughout the week and we make a podcast (in Spanish) out of our conversations. You can listen to it on iTunes, subscribe to our channel on Youtube or enjoy it through iVoox.

https://upscri.be/5c88ff/

For this Podcast #22 Bernat Farrero, CEO at itnig, Jordi Romero, CEO at Factorial, César Migueláñez, Product Director at Factorial, Masumi Mutsuda, Media at itnig talk with Ramon Santocildes, CEO at Quipu and Ernesto Venditto, Camaloons’ Sales Director about setting up and managing a B2B Sales team.

Ramon is an engineer by education and has developed his career in telecommunication companies and joined Quipu in the spring of last year as CEO. Ernesto on the other hand has worked for different web portals selling web services to businesses. For him Selling is a lifestyle.

What do you like about Sales?

Ramon: Selling does not mean being a charlatan. For me it’s detecting opportunities, needs and giving the best solution possible to customers.

Ernesto: Selling is part of everybody’s life. Just living we sell in all we do. I like to establish relationships with people, to present myself and discover other people.

Closing a big deal is satisfying. A personal conquest!

Listen to our podcast to learn more about the motivation of a sales professional, about how to detect a sales personality and how to manage a sales team.

Learn more in this Podcast in Spanish on our Youtube channel, listen to it on iTunes or enjoy it through iVoox and subscribe to our newsletter to stay always up to date.

Podcast #15: Ubaldo Huerta talking about another kind of entrepreneurship

Every week we take half an hour to talk just about any topic that crossed our minds during the last days and create a podcast for you (Listen to it in Spanish here and subscribe to our feed). We call it an Open Mic Podcast as we want to invite different people to participate, new ideas to take form and to shed light on various experiences and perspectives on business development.

This week’s Podcast #15 is opened by Masumi with our regular participants Bernat and Jordi, whom you already know. As a special guest today we welcome Ubaldo Huerta and talk about another kind of entrepreneurship, a slow growth that is not VC fueled. Listen to our podcast on Youtube or subscribe to our RSS to be always up to date.

Ubaldo Huerta, a young entrepreneur who learned to program at home thanks to his mother, left Cuba in the beginning of the 90s to San Francisco to live the early years of .com companies. In this new industry everybody was looking for developers, companies growing like mushrooms but also closing again. After a few years in this frenetic environment Ubaldo decides to leave on a sabbatical and — burned-out — wanders through Europe. He arrives in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona and is mesmerized. Quickly he decides to stay and migrates from the US just as he had years earlier from Cuba. In Barcelona he felt right at home:

“An organized place with ticks of a third world country.”

In Barcelona Ubaldo becomes an entrepreneur out of necessity: “I was earning a lot of money, but in Spain the job market was more complicated as there was no need for software developers at that moment. It was also the time of transition to dedicated servers, when you could get a server for a few dollars and build it up yourself. You could start out, try something without a high investment for infrastructure.”

Ubald started Loquo, a kind of Craigslist, a classified site from his living room. He starts with scraping email addresses from forums, sending out emails to these accounts and commenting on all kinds of threads. He starts out working on his own, with his own resources:

“I prefer to do something with my hands, spend my time writing code even though it might take time, I don’t need to live in the times of venture capital.”


“Everybody should do what he does best. If I had to spend my time raising money, talking to investors, I would go crazy.”

And after a while eBay becomes interested and ends up buying Loquo to expand their own service of auctions. Since then Ubaldo has moved on to many more interesting projects and is now busy with Fonoma.

When I create something I need to connect with my environment.

If you are curious to know what Ubaldo is up to now, go ahead and listen to the full Podcast #15: Youtube — iTunes — RSS

How to start a business from scratch

Every week we take half an hour to talk just about any topic that crossed our minds during the last days and create a podcast for you (Listen to it in Spanish here and subscribe to our feed). We call it an Open Mic Podcast as we want to invite different people to participate, new ideas to take form, and to shed light on various experiences and perspectives on business development.

Continue reading “How to start a business from scratch”