Hellas Direct Wants You To #Rethink Insurance

Hellas Direct is an innovative, technology-driven insurance company operating in Greece and Cyprus. We changed the insurance market by making things direct, simple, quick and easy and by focusing on our clients’ service and great experience while they are with us.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

The idea for Hellas Direct, a purely digital insurance company, was born in 2009, when the car insurance industry was far behind and needed a boost. It operated only through intermediaries, unnecessary fees and bureaucratic procedures. The consumer was dissatisfied with the conditions at the time, so we were given the opportunity to create a new financial solution from scratch and disrupt the market.

We had to rethink -our moto!- all insurance processes and digitize them in a way that made a huge difference in experience, cost and speed. The mathematical term for this is that we create step functions. This meant a great investment to create and grow all of our inhouse systems.

What is your magic sauce?

Being a digital native company means we built our system from scratch to serve the needs of the consumer in the new digital age. This is the big advantage of technological companies in the space i.e insurtechs. Most traditional insurance companies were built before the smartphone and before the advent of the internet so it is nearly impossible for them to change their DNA.

We, on the other hand, started fresh, built our system on new technologies and also built small components (e.g microservices) that can be reused as Lego blocks to build any structure we want, quickly. We were the first company in Europe to offer car insurance by the day e.g anything from 30 days to 365, with a big competitor doing the same 4 years later. We did something similar with home insurance where we can dynamically calculate risk just by the consumerpinpointing their house on a digital map.

Where do you see your company going in 5 years?

Last year we took a very big step in Hellas Direct. We created a new pricing algorithm, and by doing so we provide more representative prices and serve more consumers. Also, we are really proud that we teamed up with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and we are backed by a venture debt investment from the EIB (European Investment Bank. Last but not least, we recently acquired Mapfre Asistencia in Greece, adding a new “asset” to the Hellas Direct family The bet is to build services around the car, motorcycle and home ecosystems. These services will not only be insurance, but will cover a wider range of fintech space. That’s where we’re heading and that’s our next big challenge.

At Hellas Direct we want people to rethink insurance. Visit our site to see who we are, what we stand for and how we change the insurance market, one policy at a time!