The Bulgarian early-stage startup for digital insurances Boleron has figured out an innovative way to limit the need for on-premises physical visits and ensures the health safety of its clients in times of pandemic. At the end of August, the company also announced a partnership with the global leader in digital payments Visa to bring the product faster to the hands of consumers. In the span of three months, beginning from the end of August 2020 until 24th November, all users of Boleron’s app who choose to pay with a Visa card will receive a 20% cashback from the price of their insurance plan. 

The partnership, which aims to empower Bulgarian fintech companies to develop new solutions for the challenges in the payment and trade finance sector, is part of the Visa Innovation Program that is facilitated by Eleven Ventures in Bulgaria. The pilot project will allow Boleron to work directly not only with Visa but also with financial institutions part of the Visa Group from Bulgaria and Romania. 

Traction from the start

Officially launched on the market in January 2020, Boleron has already partnered with several of the big insurance brands and corporations in Bulgaria – UNIQA, Generally, FiHealth, Euroins, to name a few. In April, the newly born insurtech startup joined the Visa Innovation Program to explore potential partnerships also within the financial services and payment ecosystem.  

Being the first Bulgarian insurance broker, which offers a mobile purchase and management of insurance plans, Boleron develops and commercializes technologies such as blockchain, AI, and automatic image recognition. The fintech startup has made the online insurance process user-friendly by including only a couple of simple steps: choosing the type of insurance, filling in personal information and preferences, and making the online payment. Upon paying, the clients receive an email confirmation with an online signed documentation, which also saves hundreds of pages of paper.  

In light of the current partnership, the users will have the option to receive 20% of the purchase price in three workdays if they choose to pay with a Visa card and save their card information for future transactions. The goal of the cashback campaign is to stimulate more people to use online insurances so that they can feel the benefits of the new technologies and save some time and money. 

Although the CEO of Boleron, Alexander Tsvetkov, prefers not to disclose the number of insurances purchased through Boleron, he shares that Visa is a logical partner of his company since the people who buy digital insurance are the most active segment of society – they travel frequently, shop online, pay with cards, and have an affinity towards new technologies. 

“The benefits of the partnership are strategic. Visa’s recognizability and prestige help Boleron gain more trust, while our company’s innovation contributes to the image of Visa among its active and innovative clients,”  adds Alexander Tsvetkov.

On the part of Visa, Sevdalina Vasileva who is the General Manager of Visa for Bulgaria, Greece, and Cyprus, shares that cooperation is essential for the creation of innovative solutions: “We [at Visa] constantly seek to invest in and closely collaborate with fintech companies in order to make reliable digital payment instruments more accessible to clients and business organizations across the globe.” 

Corporate innovation, competition, and future growth? 

Digitalization swiftly changes the landscape of the insurance industry and has a positive impact on the competition in the market as clients are able to compare prices of different insurance brokers in seconds. MarketsandMarkets forecasts the global digital insurance platform market to grow to $164B by 2023. 

“We expect to witness the consolidation of some insurance brokers in the long-term because not everyone is able to develop their brand and software simultaneously,” says Alexander Tsvetkov, and adds that local players will have a hard time securing a strong competitive advantage as foreign fintech companies offering insurance services on a global level enter the market.

This is the first time that Boleron partners with a global corporation but will surely not be the last since the company plans to go into an even bigger partnership with big businesses as it enters foreign markets. Right now Boleron is focused mainly on product expansion and on simplifying the user-experience for indemnity insurances but in the long-term the company aims to delve into developing its digital life insurance offerings. With all of this R&D going on, Boleron is in the process of negotiating with two investment funds, which means we might witness a closed round of funding very soon.

+++ Read more about Visa’s 2020 Innovation Program +++

+++ See how other leaders in the financial sector are helping fintech startups with paid PoC +++