Member Article

Behind the business with Bought by Many

Bought By Many is a start-up helping consumers club together into social buying groups to get a better deal on insurance - the more people who buy, the cheaper it becomes. Communities that we’re helping to get a fairer insurance deal includes Young Drivers, French Bulldog owners, People with homes in Flood Risk areas and Over 50s iPad and iPhone owners. Bdaily talks to Steven Mendel, the CEO and Co-Founder.

1. What key challenges has your company recently faced?

For us, the biggest hurdle has been to create a name for ourselves in a huge market where innovation has been absent for many years. Insurance isn’t a fast-moving sector. There’s a way in which things have always been done, not to mention how regulated it is. The concept we have – social insurance - will shake things up a bit and open up ways for consumers to get fairer deals, but also for the insurers too who haven’t been so good at reaching groups with specific insurance needs. It will open up the opportunity for new products in a way that hasn’t been easy to do before. Generally, everyone knows that setting up a business from scratch in the UK can be a hard task, purely from a legal, accounting, and banking perspective. It can also be very expensive too, which can be off-putting, but it’s not impossible!

2. What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

That has to be signing a long-term agreement with Legal & General. They were the first mainstream insurer we went live with for a home insurance offer. The signing of the agreement took a while to achieve, but it was worth it in the end. Since then, we’ve now signed up with other insurers, but it was that partnership that helped get the ball rolling and get the insurance industry to sit up and take notice.

3. The crowd-sourcing model has proliferated recently. What’s the next step for it?

We’re very open to using crowd-sourcing to help us come up with ideas for our next insurance groups as we’re continually looking for other communities. For example, we have recently been approached by the convenor of a large residents association asking us to put together a compelling home and contents offering for his members, and we were happy to oblige. Our concept doesn’t just rely on us sourcing the groups – of course that’s a big part of it – but insurers and consumers are more than welcome to bring a new group idea to us and we’ll look into it.

4. How do you go about the process of connecting up individuals with similar requirements?

We use social media - extensively – across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter platforms. The main rationale being that if you enjoy a particular sport, live in a particular area or have a particular medical condition, you’ll most likely know others in your area that share the same interests or have the same issues. That’s effectively how the groups grow.

5. Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in your region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

We think the insurance world is long overdue for innovation. Insurers have been offering the same products for a long time and all on the basis that one size fits all but that simply isn’t want everyone wants. We’re attempting to bring together a focus on offerings for specific groups of people, and will engage directly with those groups.

6. What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Expanding on the number of groups we’re able to offer and looking to continue to build our existing communities up. The key to being able to make a real difference is to get as many people to join the groups as possible so we can affect real change. One of our groups aims to bring down the cost of insurance for young drivers. Right now 17-20 year old drivers are quoted an average of £3000 and we’ve seen some insurers quote £20,000. It’s an example of an insurance area which is ripe for change and we hope to make it happen.

7. If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

Persevere. If you’re sure about your idea or concept and confident in it, then you may have something. It’ll be hard, but it’ll all be worth it. Make better use of any contacts you have as that chain can often lead to a connection you wouldn’t have thought of or perhaps a partner. Also look for sectors that haven’t been challenged for years - the advent of social media means there are lots of ways to engage with people as well as to find data that can help you understand your customers better. Users’ willingness to share information about themselves means it’s never been easier to discover unmet needs, interests, and opinions.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Graham Vincent .