With this transaction, CRIF, together with other investors, will contribute to YOLO’s growth path and strengthen the partner ecosystem of its CRIF Digital Next platform.
CRIF has invested in the share capital of YOLO - the leading Italian group for digital insurance intermediation and services - as part of a transaction that saw the insurtech company complete a capital increase of €3 million and expand its shareholding group with the entry as lead investor of Neva Finventures (the Corporate Venture Capital vehicle of Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center and a Yolo shareholder since 2019) and Intesa Sanpaolo Vita, as well as Banca di Piacenza and Be Shaping the Future.
The new financial resources obtained in the investment round will be used by YOLO to continue the development path that has led the company, after two and a half years in business, to establish itself as a leading Italian insurtech operator of international standing. YOLO closed 2019 with around €2 million in revenues and the issue of 100,000 policies. Objectives for this year include the extension of the product portfolio to new sectors: SME policies in the first half of the year and the launch of a product in the automotive sector by the end of the year.
Through this transaction, CRIF will make a contribution to YOLO’s growth trajectory and confirms its focus on the insurtech and innovative digital services sector, which plays an important role in the context of CRIF’s innovative positioning and its value proposition to industry players and their end-clients.
Today, consumers and SMEs are becoming increasingly demanding and consider an intuitive and fast customer experience a must. In the era of Open Business, credit companies, insurance companies, and firms can grow their business and innovate in their relationship with their customers throughout their 'journey', expanding the range of value-added services (VAS) and providing an ecosystem enabled by innovative technologies that can bring significant value to all players. Therefore, the key objective is to offer the end-client an effective solution at the right time, and a simpler, more immediate, and higher quality experience.
Within this context, CRIF has developed CRIF Digital Next, an open, modular platform that also enables the orchestration of a Partner Ecosystem to respond to increasingly diverse and demanding requirements, through high-performance services.
“We are convinced that the insurtech business has the potential for significant growth, especially in the current context, characterized by the greater awareness of consumers and companies of risk protection and by the need for insurance market players to develop a digital offering. The trust placed in us confirms the interest of investors in insurtech and provides a further incentive to continue along the development path we have taken so far,” stated Gianluca De Cobelli, Co-founder and CEO of YOLO Group.
“By leveraging information assets, analytical skills, technological investments, and the continuous drive for innovation, CRIF supports financial, insurance and business players in Italy and many other countries around the world, with a service ecosystem and platform able to help them in a unique way to effectively seize all open business and digital transformation opportunities in order to reach the ‘next level’. For this reason, through this transaction, we are pleased to further strengthen the business relationship that ties us to Yolo and to welcome it to the CRIF Digital Next platform. Within the platform, Yolo will be able to contribute to generating high value-added ecosystems within a context of open banking, helping develop the user experience of our clients,” commented Silvia Ghielmetti, General Manager of CRIF.
About YOLO
YOLO Group is the leading Italian group offering services and solutions for the insurance market, including technological, providing fully and exclusively digital insurance intermediation services through the subsidiary company YOLO s.r.l. (Broker registered on the Italian Register of Intermediaries (RUI) - ref. no. B000574406). YOLO enables customers to access and sign up to products of the main insurance groups operating in Italy and internationally, in real time.
The offer is based on actual customer needs and profiles, and is adapted to fit their habits, as well as their personal and professional lives, thanks to the use of enabling technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Chatbots. YOLO is the ideal partner for insurance companies that need to distribute their products through the digital channel or Martech solutions, for both large industrial groups and financial institutions interested in developing their offer on the insurance market.
