How An Innovation Competition Led To The Establishment Of Insurance Start-Up, Pineapple SA
How An Innovation Competition Led To The Establishment Of Insurance Start-Up, Pineapple SA.The Pineapple founding team (Matthew Elan Smith, Ndabenhle Junior Ngulube and Marnus van Heerden) got together as part of an innovation competition run by Hannover-Re, during 2016, in an effort to find disruptive models to the reinsurance/insurance space. The competition ran for 6 months and it was out of their innovation spot in Rosebank, Johannesburg where the Pineapple story began.
During the competition the founders went through a process called Design Thinking – A Silicon Valley framework for stimulating innovation. It was out of its “Dark horse” phase of design thinking that the seeds of what would become Pineapple were planted. The team was fortunate enough to be coached by two brilliant minds in Business, Insurance and Entrepreneurship – Achim Klennert (CEO – Hannover-Re Africa) and Wayne Wheatley (Founder of ParrotSA). From coach to mentor – both Achim and Wayne continue to play a vital role in Pineapple’s strategic direction.
The company set out to reinvent the way insurance is done with an entirely new business model that aims to achieve affinity, fairness and simplicity to decrease costs, cap profits and deter fraud in an effort to create more value from an insurance policy than the traditional model. The Pineapple model has its roots in what is a traditional South African Stokvel, developed further to be decentralised, digital, completely scalable and fully comprehensive insurance cover with no chance of claims not being able to be paid due to a lack of funds.
As of 2020 the company had 50 000+ members and with the help of its communities, the company launched a next generation vehicle insurance offering and signed a partnership to be underwritten by Old Mutual Insure.
