Breaking through the million mark

We’ve had a massive year at Root! As we’re wrapping up for the festive break, I wanted to let you know about everything we've been up to and what lies ahead.

Looking back on 2019

Our team has been heads down this year. We focused hard on scaling up our insurance platform and reached incredible milestones. Everything at Root 1000x’ed - even our dashboards borked completely at some point!

We launched multiple national retailers on the platform. We enabled more cell-captive insurers on Root. We helped CarSure to launch South Africa’s first insurance WhatsApp bot and we did it in just 2 weeks! The most exciting milestone for me was when we passed 1 million policies on Root!

[Amidst all this, we helped OfferZen and Investec get RootCode embedded into their credit cards. I’m super stoked to see it live on and reach more developers.]

Being on this mission is no easy game, but we’ve started seeing a definite shift in the insurance industry. Product-market fit is starting to show, with increasing numbers of enterprises looking to Root to grow their insurance businesses. I’m confident that we’re on the right path, and that the insurance revolution has just begun.

How we’re building the future of insurance

Our mission has always been to package the “hard things” behind developer-friendly APIs. Since mid-2017, the team has taken a focused deep-dive into insurance. We’ve been out in the world exploring, learning from everyone willing to spare a coffee: startups, retailers, banks, e-commerce, cell-captive insurers, incumbent insurers, and big international reinsurers.

The opportunities in the industry are massive! Based on our learnings, insurance seems to be more archaic than banks when it comes to technology. Companies are locked into their legacy reality. They’re running on-prem systems, and lack the tools to reach customers in ways the modern world demands. Insurance is a complex and highly regulated industry, which makes it hard for companies to move forward or for new startups to enter the game.

With our developer-first approach, we’re working to make it easier for companies to innovate, get to market faster, deliver integrated digital experiences, and to be more relevant to their customers. Our platform is creating a new operating standard for insurance. Step by step we’re changing it from “large nightly batches” to a real-time, cloud-based game. We’re enabling companies to finally start utilising apps, chatbots, IoT and all the things you would have expected from your insurer by now.

Taking on the next phase

Next year our focus will be on strengthening our foundation and partner network in South Africa. We’re partnering with our clients to help them drive growth and launch new products in the market, while continuously evolving the platform. Once we have a solid local foothold, we’ll deploy into different regions around the world - so we’re always building with that in mind.

We’re also expanding our core team! I'm super stoked about a bunch of great new team members joining us early next year: Marissa, Nathan, Arno, and Brian.

If you’re keen to come and help us take this mission to the next level and to see your work directly impacting an industry, we’re hiring for a handful of roles!

Have a great festive break, and here’s to an awesome new year! 🎄🎉