Zego 2020: a year in review

Written by Benedict Harrison

Published on

2020 has been a year like no other…

As this busy and challenging year draws to a close, we’ve taken time to reflect on some of the key events and achievements that have taken place at Zego over the last 12 months. These include how we supported our customers through the COVID-19 pandemic, the launching of new products and the exciting awards we’ve won!

We supported our customers

When the first national lockdown was announced in the UK in March, the work of private hire, food delivery and courier drivers was no longer just important, but essential. Our customers kept the nation moving, adapting to their vital role of key workers.

As a way of saying thank you and to highlight their work, we launched our #BehindTheMask campaign, featuring real stories from some of our customers as they went about their day to day work in the pandemic.

Nevertheless, we didn’t stop there - we offered a variety of initiatives to benefit our customers, including free 14-day sick cover and the option to temporarily downgrade to a Social, Domestic & Pleasure only policy.

As the year progressed, we took further steps to provide an improved service to our customers. We’ve migrated our support platform onto Salesforce. This ensured scalability, enhanced efficiency and effectively equipped the teams with the correct technology to help them communicate with our customers.

We laid foundations for the future of insurance pricing

As the rise of new and innovative approaches to mobility poses a challenge to the pricing models of traditional insurers, insurtechs, including Zego, are creating innovative ways to gain a better understanding of risk.

In the second half of 2020, we launched the Zego Sense app to gain a better insight into how our customers navigate the roads, acquired Drivit, a pioneering telematics company, and introduced novel rating factors into our pricing models. As traditional insurers struggle to satisfy the demands of increasingly connected, mobile, and demanding customers, we’re ensuring that we can provide cover that powers opportunities and facilitates innovation rather than hindering it.

We launched exciting new products and partnerships

At Zego, we’re always looking to provide the products our customers want to see, so we were delighted to launch our Combined Car Delivery insurance earlier this year. With this product, we can offer a broader range of choices to delivery drivers, so they can opt for the flexibility of our pay-as-you-go cover or enjoy the convenience of an all-in-one policy.

The rise in the number of van couriers has been widely publicised this year, so we were thrilled to be able to support this through the launch of our Courier Van insurance.

We also announced partnerships with a number of like minded companies, including private hire firms Bolt and FREENOW, A-rated insurer RSA and we also launched our Uber Eats Pro offering together with Uber Eats.

In December, we also became the first UK insurtech to be granted a European broking licence, which will enable us to work with EU-based insurance partners and customers to provide our products in more countries in the future.

We were proud to support sustainable mobility

Although the world’s attention may be directed more towards our current global health crisis, the threat of climate change looms large. Together with our insurance partners, we were able to support the first ever trial of e-scooters in the UK, with a fully integrated solution built using the latest technologies.

The benefit micromobility solutions bring to urban areas is clear; vehicles such as e-scooters and e-bikes offer an eco-friendly, sustainable means of transport for people to move freely around cities. The team at Zego are confident that in another ten years’ time, we will see dozens of urban transport vehicles that are fully integrated with our lives. We are proud to support sustainable mobility with insurance products that highlight how insurance and technology can work so well together.

We’ve introduced a number of diversity and belonging initiatives

This year, our Talent Acquisition team has launched a number of initiatives to ensure that Zego is an inclusive, diverse and fantastic place to work for all Zegons. We’ve delivered a number of new training initiatives to more than 80 Zegons, including interview and unconscious bias training sessions.

There is a strong collaborative commitment throughout the company, from top-down, to make Zego a great place to work and to focus on attracting and hiring the very best Zegons. We’re delighted to say that we’ve also increased our female representation in tech from 19.6% to 30.6%, and our BAME representation has equally increased from 12.7% to 23.4% over the last four months of 2020.

We scooped up some exciting awards!

We were pleased to see our efforts recognised this year, as Zego won some very coveted titles. We were nominated for the Best Insurtech Award at the UK FinTech Awards, named as Tech Company of the Year (Medium) at the UK Business Tech Awards and featured on Tech Nation’s Future Fifty.

What’s up next year?

Without giving away too much, there is a lot to be excited about in 2021 at Zego. We will be continuing to grow our team, scale our products and expand into more territories than ever before.