Meet the insurtech: SafetyWing

In 2017, the founders of SafetyWing, a digital insurance company built to serve freelancers, remote work forces and especially digital nomads, already saw the future of mobile and remote work. 

Working for Superside, a platform for freelance design work, co-founder Sondre Rasch wanted to offer benefits for freelancers on the platform and could not find any company offering that. With co-founders Sarah Sandnes, an engineer, and Hans Kjellby, a lawyer, they set out to build what became SafetyWing, which launched in 2018. The trio all had experience working as digital nomads, an increasingly popular lifestyle for young professionals engaged in remote work while traveling nomadically around the world.

“It’s nomad insurance by nomads for nomads, and it works,” says Rasch, who is now based in San Francisco.

The biggest issue for these workers, in Rasch’s view, was the lack of a social safety net, especially health insurance. “The internet economy is global,” he says. “But the social safety net, including private insurance, is not, and needs to be remade in a global, digital way.”

Rasch drew on previous experience as a policy advisor for the Norwegian government to design social safety net services that could be offered by SafetyWing. The company has two main products, Nomad Insurance and Remote Health. The former is medical insurance that digital nomads can buy for coverage outside their home country, even after they are already abroad. The latter is geared to companies seeking to cover healthcare for employees and contractors no matter where they are worldwide.

Nomad Insurance is available for $42 per month to customers ages 18 to 39 (or $77 per month to include travel within the US), and has a $250 deductible and a $250,000 coverage limit. Remote Health, launched in 2020, provides more extensive coverage for ages 18 to 39 at rates ranging from $99 per person per month for companies with 34 to 39 employees, to $128 per person per month for companies with five to 11 employees. Add-ons are available for coverage for ages 40 and older, dental coverage and more. 

SafetyWing keeps rates at these relatively low levels partly because covering a younger population is lower risk and by operating without brokers or broker networks. Nomad Insurance is underwritten by Worldtrips, a subsidiary of Tokio Marine. Remote Health is underwritten by Tokio Marine’s Vumi unit. “The percentage of premiums that goes to brokers actually can get quite high,” says Rasch. Remote Health is growing tenfold year-over-year, he adds. Word of mouth contributed in large part to growing SafetyWing’s customer base, which has reached 100,000 policyholders. SafetyWing was originally funded by Y Combinator, a start-up accelerator, and completed a $35 million Series B financing round in April. 

The company’s product model could be applied to other “safety-net” type services such as medical care and retirement savings, according to Rasch. “Remote Doctor is a support service we’ve found necessary to build because there isn’t a global virtual doctor service yet,” he says. “Remote Retirement will be the first global retirement product for remote teams, which will also be for later this year.”

In the insurance space, SafetyWing also plans a disability insurance product to launch in late 2022 or early 2023, Rasch adds. “That’s how we think about products,” he says. “We’re trying to complete the global social safety net, some of which happens to be in insurance.”