Yolo, the insurtech startup That works for two years on the Italian market, has decided to accelerate its growth plans. The Board approved the update of the industrial plan presented by CEO Gianluca de Cobelli and approved a new capital raising of up to 20 billion to implement it.
Over the next five years - announces a note from the company - Yolo will aim to increase partnerships with banks, insurance companies and retailers to consolidate the reference role acquired in the insurtech market. In the two-year period 2018-2019 YOLO has already defined partnerships with leading banks (for example, Intesa Sanpaolo Group, CheBanca! and Banca Ifis), insurance companies (for example, Intesa Sanpaolo Assicura, Zurich, Genertel, Helvetia and Net Insurance) and retailers, also operating in the sharing economy.
The development of partnerships will be supported through an enhancement of the technological platform at the basis of the business model. The intention is to "consolidate the artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions, the analysis, profiling and customization capabilities of the platform offer".
The other "leg" of the plan concerns a strong push towards the internationalization of the business, starting with countries with an insurance market similar to the Italian one and/or a competitive framework suitable for the penetration of Yolo's offer model. The company has already obtained authorization to operate under the "freedom of services" (LPS) in some European countries and will start operating in Spain within the year.
To achieve the objectives it is therefore necessary to strengthen the capital structure with new contributions, for this reason the Board of Directors has approved the launch of a new phase of capital raising up to a maximum of 20 million euros which will be completed by the first quarter of 2020 .
The new round (Round B) follows the one carried out at the beginning of 2019 (Round A) which generated resources for 5 million euros. Neva Finventures, the Corporate Venture Capital of Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, which with 20% of the shares is among the main shareholders of Yolo Group, acted as "Lead Investor" in Round A.
In addition to the current shareholders, the new round in which the group will be assisted by EY Advisor is open to the participation of institutional investors.
Yolo expects to achieve revenues of approximately 2 million euro by the end of the year and the issue of 100.000 policies.
“We have entered a new phase of our growth journey,” he said Gianluca De Cobelli, Co-founder and CEO of Yolo Group. “The Business Plan aims to accelerate growth, also internationally, by enhancing the growing interest on the part of the insurance market for the digitization of the offer and the competitiveness of our platform to support new business models”.
