Before you shoot me down I’m a Monzo customer for both my personal and joint accounts. The community Monzo has built is unbelievable.
I’m also a co founder of Jellybean we’re looking to disrupt contents insurance and more specifically how you pay for your policy.
Only 40% of those who rent have contents insurance that statistic alone is crazy
We are in our infancy and would be keen to gather thoughts around contents insurance and how traditional payments for you monthly premiums could be disrupted.
I couldn’t find any trace of you on the net but there has been a Jellybean Services registered as an Insurance broker in Ohio since 2010. Maybe change it to Jezzobeans before you get the fat envelope to sign for?
Seriously though, this is a great place to get early feedback… very welcoming moderators and full of early adopters.
So who are you and why did you decide to start this business? Is it just an idea at the moment or do you have a product available or in development?
I’m one of those 40% who rents but doesn’t have contents insurance. I did state on another thread that I’d take it out if Monzo served it up on a plate to me at a good price, but I’m still waiting for that feature to roll out.
Good questions, as for Jellybean we are exploring our proposition and idea at the moment we hope it all falls into place within the next month we’ve been working tirelessly with our proposition and business model.
Who are we well, Jellybean has been founded by two of us both with backgrounds outside of insurance which we hope gives us a fresh perspective. However, we do know it’s a challenging industry and knowledge is key. Which is why we are in the process behind the scenes in establishing a group of influential advisors who believe in us and our proposition to support us.
Previously we’ve been involved in our own businesses from clothing lines to app’s. However we’ve both experienced how crap, confusing, lacklustre whatever words you want to use the insurance industry can be and feel that there’s huge potential to make it more inclusive and transparent.
I do agree the Monzo community is an awesome place and everyone seems super passionate not just about Monzo but what else could be made better.
Hope that gives you a better understanding of who we are?
@Gaoler there has to be some level of autonomy to allow customers the pick a value of insurance they wish to cover. However how this is done can be changed as well as many other factors of contents or insurance in general. However choosing a value of cover isn’t to dissimilar to choosing a overdraft amount.
So how is JellyBean actually different? Is it an insurance company or a broker? Will it save me having to enter everything about myself into a price comparison site every year, or will I need to do that anyway to make sure I’m getting a decent deal?
@WillP79 Hi will This will be our own product not a platform pairing you to the most suitable insurance product. So if your one who likes to shop around year on year then you would still need to jump on compare the market or whatever platform you use . However we’re working on making the whole policy and experience different by 1) looking into alternative payments 2) creating a policy that puts you in control and is transparent 3) making insurance relative not generic including the information we ask on signing up.
Hi @WillP79 we are looking into how we could offer an alternative to the traditional way you pay for your premium however we are toying with several ideas this was one reason for asking for support in completing our survey.
In regards to control insurance policies currently offer little flex when it comes to change in circumstances, change in value covered or the ability to add/remove/freeze certain areas of your cover or specific items within the policy. We are keen to give users much more control over there cover and how they wish to manage it.
By relative we know that most insurance policies ask generic questions to come to the conclusion over cost of policy and if you fit. But what if you were asked questions that related more to your personal circumstances to ensure you got the right policy tailored to your needs without any assumptions or trying to fit you into the bucket.
As I’ve said before we are in our infancy and approaching the Monzo community was to ask for help, not to sell a full proposition or convince anyone what we are trying to do will meet everyone’s criteria or needs.
Happy to answer any other questions you may have or to say thanks if you’ve helped us by completing our survey
To lower the cost of your policy what would you consider as an alternative to traditional payment?*
Completing online surveys
Making purchases to build cashback credit
Watching a video or listening to a podcast and answering questions
How much time would you be happy to spend on per month on an alternative way to pay?
Under 1 hour
1-2 hours
Over 3 hours
So it would appear they’re going to make you watch irrelevant ads or visit dodgy sites to buy stuff like app game developers do.
Contents insurance is really, really cheap already. Must be about £8 per month for me (if that). It would not be worth the hassle at all to go through all the above each month to get it reduced because I imagine there isn’t much wiggle room on the monthly cost to make it remotely worthwhile.
I’d also argue that this isn’t “groundbreaking”, more off putting, but will be interesting to see where it goes.
@Ordog hey thanks for you views. Nope not at all have you used those dodgy sites? They suck and we are well aware that any proposition we offer needs to put the customer first. There’s certainly ways to do this opinions etc which are tailored but we would never ask users to sign up to irrelevant promotions, buy crap products or have to buy games or add on’s Where’s the value in that if we are trying to make insurance cheaper and inclusive your assumptions just don’t make sense. Also as you can tell from our survey we are exploring several avenues nothing has been committed as why we’ve asked for help.
Yep contents insurance is fairly cheap however, it’s still not attractive enough for most to even bother taking out a policy 60% of renters don’t have cover that says a lot about the current market.
More than happy to listen to suggestions or ideas around insurance
This is a strong claim to make. How would you know which ads are relevant to me? Targeted or not, I personally think all ads are irrelevant, hence the use of an adblocker and you’ll find that most people use one of these too for the same reasons.
So using my situation as an example - let’s say that it is £8 per month that I’m currently paying. Even if you manage to make all ads relevant to me. If you wanted me to watch 1 hour of videos I’d expect at least minimum wage of £8.21 so you’d end up owing me money
Forgive what seems like an attack. I just can’t get my head around what makes you stand out from the others, why I would consider switching and how it is groundbreaking Plus, instead of addressing my concerns I feel your responses are a little condescending and you’re just skirting around the points I’ve raised without providing any real context.
@Ordog First apologies I’m trying to keep everything light hearted clearly I’ve failed
In regards to context. You’ve made reference to one option Surveys. So a bit of context 1) What is stopping us creating our own panel company where surveys are generated for our customer segments as loose example not gospel, if you’ve registered specific items to your policy that these surveys are focused on the products you own and your behaviours to these. 2) We understand the time involved and this would be a factor if we chose surveys as an alternative payment method but as previously mentioned we are in our infancy so feedback is so important to us 3) Data is valuable and your personal data needs to be protected so any data we share would come specifically from the actions relating to the alternative payment method we decide to go with and users opt in to 4) How good would it be if you do actually make more in a month than your premium how could we work with this scenario do we pay you back or put it in a pool so if you ever need to make a claim it goes towards the excess payment or when you cancel your policy you get the extra back. 5) Ads or videos yep I use an adblocker too but is there a way to make these work? Again a question we need to answer and understand the suitability if this was an option.
Please just take the above as examples we’ve decided on nothing yet and this is why we love the challenge.
You mentioned would this set us apart. We are only talking about a payment method we’ve not even at this stage offered our full product proposition. We would love to tie in a great alternative way to pay with a great product that adds value to the market. However whatever we offer will not be for everyone we understand that.
I’m not trying to intentionally skirt around points addressed I’m just trying to answer in a non committed way as these are all just ideas. If we were to go with one of these options then we would have a strong proposition to agrue and promote the pro’s and way we’ve chosen the model we’ve done in a more constructive and direct way.
All I’ve asked is that anyone who would like to help us do so by completing a survey.
Love the debate and I understand your not intentional on the attack it’s all constructive in my eyes
This road ahead is long and we would love to get to the point where we say hey we are Jellybean and this is what we are offering.
. However we’re working on making the whole policy and experience different by 1) looking into alternative payments 2) creating a policy that puts you in control and is transparent 3) making insurance relative not generic including the information we ask on signing up.
and you’ll find that most people use one of these too for the same reasons.
Plus, instead of addressing my concerns I feel your responses are a little condescending and you’re just skirting around the points I’ve raised without providing any real context.
proposition to agrue and promote the pro’s and way we’ve chosen the model we’ve done in a more constructive and direct way.
thank you for taking the time to write all that, it is much clearer now 