The insurance market was a different place in 2015, the year Florian Brokamp and Christopher Leifeld cofounded Thinksurance in Frankfurt, Germany. In that short span, the two co-founders have secured more than 20 million EUR in growth capital and grown their operations from a two-person startup to a thriving company with over 140 employees. Thinksurance is a platform that fully digitises the development, sales, advice, and support of commercial and industrial insurances. All significant insurers and most brokers in Germany already work with the company. The company also provides technology solutions to online brokers, agencies, and banks. Because of this widespread reach, the Thinksurance platform boasts more than 35,000 unique users and brokers tens of millions of EUR in business premiums every year. Earlier this year, Mr Brokamp was named a featured winner for Germany in the 2021 CEO Today Europe Awards, where he gave an interview about his company’s success.
Despite their success, no company was immune to the effects of the pandemic. When asked how Thinksurance was able to overcome the pandemic’s challenges, Mr Brokamp discussed their approach. Their business model showed itself to be robust enough for sustained growth throughout the pandemic. According to Mr Brokamp, “We almost doubled our team and now count 130 employees. In addition, we upgraded our software architecture significantly”. Despite the lockdowns, they were able to utilise that time to improve the company infrastructure, meaning strategy, processes, and people. Part of this has to do with their approach, but part of it also has to do with the demands of COVID. During the pandemic, digitalisation was a top priority for businesses, governments, and practically any organisation around the globe. Since Thinksurance primarily offers efficient digitisation, the company experienced a boon.
When CEO Today asked Mr Brokamp about his greatest success in the preceding 12 months – which corresponded to much of the pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic – the CEO noted two main things, “First, it impresses me how a fast-growing team with so many colleagues working together for the first time is excelling in speed, execution, and new ideas despite the challenges we faced on a societal level over the last couple of months. This is really bringing us one step ahead and helping us to create long-lasting value for our partners”.
This is especially impressive since those employees had not been working together long. The second, Mr Brokamp was amazed “how we reached even the most ambitious targets we set for ourselves. For example, we opened our first international office in France very successfully this year, against the odds of a global pandemic and the general lockdown”.
Mr Brokamp has grand plans for the future of Thinksurance. His vision is not to conquer the German “insurtech” market but to have an impact on a global scale. The company’s dream is to digitise the commercial insurance market and expand within industrial insurance. These sectors have long been bogged down by paperwork, and Thinksurance reduces paperwork by as much as 80%. To bring this dream to fruition, they “want to start the further European rollout and prepare the launch on another continent. In addition, we are currently reinventing our platform, bringing innovations to the industry which have never been seen before”. With an accelerating international expansion and a receptive and growing market, we expect big things from this company.
Source: CEO Today Magazine, Europe Awards 2021 – Winner’s Edition. https://europeawards.ceotodaymagazine.com/winners-edition/