How Anapi Is Pushing Insurance into the Future

Four years ago, George Kesselman was the youngest COO of a major US-based insurance company. His career was progressing, but something didn’t feel right. Stifled by the constraints of the traditional insurance system, Kesselman found it almost impossible to innovate. “I felt like a train engineer, where you can only go a little bit faster or a little bit slower,” he says. “The rails are largely set for you, and it’s hard to make significant changes.”

The major issue holding insurance companies back, according to Kesselman, was that the sales teams controlled the product distribution and “everything, from the product itself to technology and customer service, was optimized for making in-person sales of complex products.”

To reinvent insurance for the age of digital, Kesselman founded Anapi, which provides a set of API-first technology tools that function behind the scenes of any digital platform to seamlessly bring in relevant protection for their customers. Anapi’s guiding belief is that uncertainties and resulting consumer worries if left unchecked quickly become painful growth blockers for a digital business. Headquartered in Singapore, and partnered with leading insurers across Asia, Anapi brings protection solutions to digital companies and rebuilds insurance fundamentals, tailoring them to the digital landscape. “We can work with any combination of digital partners and insurers in any cloud-friendly country,” Kesselman explains. As a tech company, rather than an insurance provider, Anapi’s tech is free to work outside of constraints that previously shackled the industry.

Anapi’s API Shatters the Old Insurance, Rebuilds It New for the Future

Ultimately, Anapi has reconfigured the traditional pillars of insurance: distribution, product, and service. First, agents’ stranglehold on product distribution disappears—Anapi’s automated API-first technology does all the work, delivering appropriate insurance coverage for any digital business looking to add an embedded protection. Anapi’s partners are no longer constrained to quickly access to appropriate protection for their customers, especially protection that extends across multiple geographies. Second, the company is co-creating new digital products, focusing on smaller-scale, more data-driven insurance. Gone are the all-encompassing bundled products of yore. Finally, Anapi’s simplified product approach allows for easily defined claim payment rules. Claims decisions become quick, with payment going directly to a client’s bank account.

Having recently partnered with MSIG Insurance, the number one provider in Southeast Asia, Anapi has begun to branch out after launching its first product. “With our travel delay insurance, there’s plenty of data available about actual flight delays,” Kesselman says. With access to robust data, the company can understand pricing and accurately address when a delay is occurring or imminent. Insurance reacts and adjusts before the customer can even think about filing a claim, processing everything on the customer’s behalf. It’s a new, fully-embedded and seamless system at work.

Soon, Kesselman plans to take Anapi beyond Southeast Asia, venturing worldwide with new cyber and health protection capabilities. Kesselman says, “We started off with an out there concept—reimagining insurance as we know it. And then we said, the perfect insurance is going to be small. It’s going to be hyper-relevant. And it’s going to be embedded within the digital environment.”