CXA founder back with new insurtech platform Covee

Rosaline Chow Koo, founder of insurtech startup CXA, is back with a new venture – and she’s using her 20 years of experience as a broker to stand out from the competition.

She is launching Covee, an AI-enabled platform for small boutique firms that are focused on benefits insurance, after six months of development. Built Different Ventures, which specializes in co-building and investing in AI-enabled B2B startups, led its US$750,000 pre-seed round.

Digital collage by Ulla, photos courtesy of Covee

Through Covee, brokers can break down multiple pages of corporate insurance policy into easily understandable language within minutes.

Koo says employee-benefits renewal – where companies renegotiate the health insurance policy for their employees – typically takes boutique brokerage firms 30 hours of manual review, which includes going over the fine print and tabulating data found in separate files. With Covee, the process can be done within minutes.

Brokers can also view side-by-side comparisons of premiums and benefits through the platform, shortening the process from several days to less than a day.

Koo envisions Covee as an “operating system” for boutique insurance firms globally. She also sees the platform helping companies lower the cost of employee benefits down the line – a problem she previously tackled with CXA.

“I don’t care if I’m 65 – I’m still obsessed with this same problem,” Koo says. “And this time it’s different. I don’t need hundreds of employees. I just have this AI tool.”

A number of boutique insurance firms in Asia have begun using the platform, but Koo did not specify which or how many. With the fresh capital, she is setting her sights on expanding to the US.

AI-enabled insurtech

Through a demo with Tech in Asia, Koo showed how Covee can analyze spreadsheets that contain anonymized employee benefit claims from corporate clients. The platform provides a review of these documents, from the most used employee benefits in a certain period to the demographics of the employees that availed them.

Eventually, Koo sees the tool opening up to HR departments. She believes Covee can help companies customize the health benefits they offer to employees based on their specific needs, which can lead to lower health benefit costs.

Her previous company, CXA, white-labeled a solution that allowed employees to customize their health benefits. To grow its reach, it also ran a traditional insurance brokerage business. The firm said it had served more than 400,000 employees across Southeast Asia and China.

CXA was eventually sold in parts to various entities, including HSBC and global insurance adviser Pacific Prime. It ceased operations last year.

See also: How CXA’s big SaaS bet paid off during Covid-19

The competitive edge