APOLLO, CAARY Partner On SMB Digital Insurance

Canada’s APOLLO Insurance is working with CAARY, a digital lending platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), to offer digital insurance to visitors on caary.com, the two companies announced on Wednesday (July 14).

APOLLO, which launched two years ago, claims to have the largest selection of online insurance in Canada. According to a company news release, the APOLLO exchange lets customers complete their insurance business in real time, using “extensive data and sophisticated algorithms” to deliver quotes and policies, letting SMBs and individuals buy insurance without human interaction.

“CAARY is at the cutting edge of FinTech solutions for small and medium-sized businesses in Canada,” said APOLLO Business Development Manager Yonas Alemyehu. “Their entirely digital solution for credit, expense and spending management is a great fit with APOLLO’s ability to offer a seamless online purchasing experience for small business insurance, saving customers both in time and money.”

CARRY is set to launch its full platform this fall, offering a “corporate credit card solution for the more than 850,000 SMEs in Canada still relying on personal credit.”

The company uses the Mastercard network to offer same-day credit card approval and “near-instant” virtual card issuance.

“The partnership with APOLLO provides terrific value-add to our customers,” said Pat Finerty, chief strategy officer at CAARY. “We want small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada to have access to a variety of fantastic benefits to help them grow their business. This partnership, which rounds out the CAARY offering, is another important step in that direction.”

As PYMNTS reported in April, embedded insurance with dynamic bundling allows businesses to tailor the contents of an insurance plan by including or subtracting specific protections for their customers. Static offerings don’t allow for such flexibility.

And this type of flexibility can benefit all types of insurance, as PYMNTS’ Retail Product Insurance study found. Of the eCommerce shoppers surveyed, 60 percent said they would buy insurance with online purchases if that option was available at checkout.

A vast majority of the people who said they bought insurance from merchants at checkout — 83 percent — said they were more likely to purchase insurance for future products if that option was offered at checkout.