Former Grab CTO wants to shake up insurance for the digital economy

The Axinan team / Photo credit: Axinan

Wei Zhu spent much of the past two decades working for some of the biggest names in tech. Just over a year ago he decided to cash in his corporate credentials and fulfill a long-held ambition to launch his own startup.

Inspiration for Axinan – the startup Wei Zhu founded in mid-2016 – came from China, where a number of new fintech companies were making waves in the insurance space.

Startups like ZhongAn – which has attracted funding from Ant Financial, SoftBank, and Tencent, and became one of the biggest ever fintech IPOs when it listed in Hong Kong last year – have revolutionized the sale of insurance plans by taking the process completely online.

See: How Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent plan to dominate Chinese online insurance

Wei Zhu observed the trajectory taken by China’s insurance industry, and noticed similar trends taking root in Southeast Asia too.

“One thing driving this to happen is very rapid adoption of mobile and online for all aspects of life in China – whether ecommerce, mobile payment, ride-hailing, delivery,” he told Tech in Asia.

“I’ve been in Southeast Asia since 2012, having spent 20 years in America,” said the China-born engineer. “I can see the change in society and the economy in that time. If history is a guide, Southeast Asia is following in the steps of China.”

Axinan is looking to offer high frequency, low premium microinsurance products tailored to the digital economy, mitigating risks that traditional insurance companies are yet to fully address.

“One of the first things we work on is related to [product] returns. It’s definitely a pain point for consumers, merchants, as well as for the ecommerce platforms. As ecommerce becomes more sophisticated, consumers have increased sophistication in demand as well.”

The long-term plan is for Axinan to become a “full-stack tech company with a full insurance license,” he added.

Axinan founder Wei Zhu/ Photo credit: PayPal

His market research revealed that two of the top three complaints most often made by ecommerce consumers are related to product returns. The top complaint was the cost of delivery. This encouraged the Axinan team to develop parcel return insurance as their first product.