The disruptive life insurer saw a lack of consumer-first solutions

A 27-minute listen

As part of our season of Innovation, DeadHappy co-founder Phil Zeidler spoke with Sam Shaw recently about the firm’s desire to turn around the perception of life insurance, which is typically seen as “dull, boring and complex”. This encompassed everything from its positioning & customer engagement, to how it is communicated through to redesigning the policy itself by making it more flexible with a simpler underwriting process and in doing so, better meeting customers’ needs.

Especially as we go through the current cost-of-living crisis, Phil feels a flexible approach to pricing – especially when you see the cancellation rate on some longer-term policies – makes a lot of sense.

He says people make the assumption that they only deal with young people, given their irreverent tone of voice, but this is not the case, he says that attitude counts far more than physical age, with their customers spanning from their teens well into retirement. Not just a D2C business, he would welcome conversations with advice firms that aren’t able (or willing) to service the fairly straightforward protection need that DeadHappy caters for, and is conscious that each type of distribution model has a role to play in reducing the protection gap.

 

“Life insurance is an amazing product; it’s the ultimate gift of love to your family and friends, which you can take great delight in buying, if it’s positioned in the right way…”

The firm offers a ‘death wish’ platform, which helps engage people as most don’t really understand what life insurance is for, he says, let alone have a meaningful conversation about sums assured.”So we ask a different question, which is ‘What do you want to happen when you die?’ ”

Death in this country is still one of the last taboos, he says, which makes absolutely no sense.

“We all understand we are all going to die, so why shouldn’t we make it a more fulfilling conversation to think about and plan for these things together, by inviting a more emotional connection to the product?”

What would your DeathWish be?
Can we open a conversation with DeadHappy?
Do you welcome providers approaching things differently, or is it too far from what you’re used to?