Alan
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Alan raises $220 million for its health insurance and healthcare superapp
French startup Alan has raised a $220 million funding round at a $1.67 billion valuation (€185 million and €1.4 billion respectively). Coatue is leading the round with Dragoneer, Exor, and existing investors Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Temasek also participating.
Alan has been building health insurance products from scratch. When I first covered the company back in 2016, the startup had just managed to get approval from regulators to become an official health insurance company.
Since then, it’s been a not-so-slow-and-steady growth story as the company now covers 160,000 people. Overall, Alan generates over €100 million in annualized revenue. While most of that revenue is spent back on claims, it’s an impressive revenue trajectory.
Like other insurance companies, Alan has some capital requirements to comply with health insurance regulation. Alan has to raise more if it wants to insure more people. But that’s just part of the story as the startup still had enough cash on its bank account for the next 12 to 18 months.
“The context is that we managed to end the year 2020 very strong, finally — and I say finally because it’s been stressful until the last minute,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve told me.
Alan managed to meet its goals and international expansion finally started to take off. Many startups try to raise when they’re in a strong position. You shouldn’t wait until you have your back against the wall and that’s exactly what’s happening here.
“We thought it was the right time and we had multiple term sheets. Even though valuation is really good we first looked at a partner that has a really long-term vision,” Samuelian-Werve said.
With today’s funding round, the company can iterate on its core product — health insurance — and everything that makes Alan a superapp — a single app that lets you access several services. In France, employees are covered by both the national healthcare system and private insurance companies. Alan sells its products to other companies so that their employees are automatically covered by Alan contracts. It’s a sort of B2B2C play.
9,400 companies have opted for Alan in France, Belgium and Spain — the company’s home market remains its main market. Clients include WeWork, Deliveroo, JustEat, Vitaliance and Big Mamma. By 2023, Alan wants to reach 1 million members.
In order to gain more customers, Alan is betting on three pillars — product innovation, customer satisfaction through additional services, and expansions to new verticals and markets.
When it comes to product innovation, Alan has designed a modular insurance builder. Small companies can subscribe to Alan in a few clicks. Big companies can tweak every single parameter to build the right insurance package for them.
After that, the company tries to make it easy to manage your health insurance. You’ll soon be able to automatically manage sick leaves, change the employee affiliation status, etc. As for employees, the company has always promoted a transparent offering. For instance, you should know how much you’re going to pay out of pocket when you see a doctor. You can see a map of doctors around you and how much they charge on average. This way, there’s no surprise.
Alan also tries to reimburse you as quickly as possible. If it’s a straightforward claim, the startup tries to analyze and categorize your claim as quickly as possible and then issue an instant SEPA transfer. Seventy-five percent of claims are reimbursed and available on your bank account in less than an hour.
These core product features definitely contributes to customer satisfaction. But Alan is expanding beyond insurance products with several additional services that should increase retention. For instance, you can chat with a doctor, get medical advice for your baby’s health, get a free meditation app subscription, start a telehealth appointment via a partner, talk with someone about your mental health, etc.
Those services contribute to turning Alan into a superapp for your health. Essentially, as soon as you’re insured by Alan, you become a member and can access all those services without additional charges.
Eventually, Alan plans to launch a personal care guidance service to help you contact the right healthcare professional based on your health issue. In Spain, Alan can already book appointments for you.
Finally, Alan plans to reach new customers through aggressive expansion goals. The company plans to hire 400 people within the next three years and expand to other industries with tailor-made insurance products, such as retail, wholesale and manufacturing.
While the company is still going to focus on France, Belgium and Spain in the near future, it is looking at opportunities across Europe. So let’s see where Alan is going to expand next.
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Health insurance startup Alan lets you chat with a doctor
French startup Alan is building health insurance products. And 100,000 people are now covered through Alan . I caught up with the company’s co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve so that he could give us an update on the product.
Alan has obtained its own health insurance license and is a proper insurance company. It doesn’t partner with existing insurance companies. The company primarily sells its insurance product to other companies.
In France, employees are covered by both the national healthcare system and private insurance companies. So Alan convinces other companies to use its product for all employees.
Over the years, Alan has diversified its offering with high-end coverage, partnerships with CNP Assurances, Livi and Petit Bambou, and a focus on new verticals, such as companies in the hospitality industry or retired individuals.
“We’ve kept shipping, and I even think that our pace has increased. We’ve released some exciting stuff in recent months, for our members, for companies and for us internally,” Samuelian-Werve told me.
The biggest change isn’t visible to the end user. The company has built a service that lets them generate a new insurance package on demand. It uses historical data to figure out pricing on the fly. And it opens up some market opportunities as big companies want a custom insurance product depending on their needs.
The biggest Alan customer is a company with 1,000 to 1,500 employees. But the startup is currently selling its product to bigger companies. The idea is that companies with more than 100 employees can get a custom insurance package.
For the customer, pricing remains transparent as Alan shows you how much it costs to cover your medical needs depending on what you’re asking for. Alan adds a membership fee on top of that to access the platform and related services.
Alan is also introducing a new messaging feature. You can start a text discussion with a doctor whenever you have a question about your health — it’s included in your insurance package. Alan doesn’t want to replace your general practitioner. But having a doctor that you can text is always helpful when you’re not sure what to do next.
On the other side of the screen, there are actual doctors answering your questions. “We’ve hired a full-time doctor and we’re working with a bit under 10 doctors on a part-time basis,” Samuelian-Werve told me.
Alan’s app has been redesigned with a bigger emphasis on your health instead of your insurance. The company shows you all your interactions with health professionals. You can add documents and notes to consolidate information in the same place.
It sounds a bit like France’s DMP, which acts as a personal repository for all your health-related documents. And Alan doesn’t want to replace the public initiative. The startup would like to take advantage of the service to upload and download data at some point down the road.
If you give your consent, Alan can also proactively nudge you about your health. For instance, given your child’s age, Alan can notify you when they’re supposed to get vaccinated. Or if you haven’t been to the dentist in a year, Alan can tell you that it’s time to get a routine checkup.
Finally, the company has improved efficiency when it comes to reimbursements. “Seventy-four percent of reimbursements are issued within an hour. And we’re using instant transfers to send money to your bank account,” Samuelian-Werve told me.
As you can see, Alan is releasing incremental updates. They slowly add up and change the product. In the coming years, the company plans to offer its product in multiple European countries.
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Alan raises another $45 million for its health insurance product
Paris-based startup Alan has raised a Series B round of funding of $45 million (€40 million). Index Ventures is once again leading the round, with partners of DST Global also participating. The company had raised a $28 million funding round only 10 months ago.
Alan is a software-as-a-service startup tackling a very specific industry: the health insurance market in France — and soon across Europe. The company wants to create a well-designed insurance product with transparent pricing and policies to make healthcare more accessible. And it isn’t just a marketplace — the startup has obtained an official health insurance license and is the first new health insurance company in France in 30 years.
In France, every employee is covered by the national healthcare system for basic reimbursements, as well as a private insurance company for more expensive treatments. In addition to that, legacy insurance companies have neglected those products as they usually don’t generate a lot of margins on that segment. It creates a huge market opportunity for Alan.
With today’s funding announcement, the startup has shared some numbers. In 2018 alone, the company grew from 5,000 insured people to 27,000, and revenue jumped from $4 million to $25 million (€3.5 million to €22 million). Alan has been focused on freelancers as well as small and medium companies, such as My Little Paris, Le Slip Français, Ledger and Converteo.
More interestingly, Alan is close to break-even right now with 64 employees. That gives you an idea of Alan’s margins.
Following today’s funding round, the company is going to hire a lot more people. There should be around 175 people working for Alan by the end of the year.
On the product front, the company is always looking at ways to make the experience as seamless as possible. “We’re trying to make the insurance process instantaneous, from quotes to coverage and reimbursements” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian told me.
But Alan has always been about healthcare at large, not just insurance products. So let’s see how they can use this influx of funding to simplify healthcare in general.
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Health insurance startup Alan covers meditation app subscription
French startup Alan wants to be a bit better than your good old health insurance. That’s why the company is trying something new and now covers part of your Petit Bambou subscription.
Petit Bambou is a popular meditation app. It’s a sort of Headspace, but with French content. You download an app, put your earphones, close your eyes and follow the instructions. Meditating ten or twenty minutes every day should help you feel better after a while.
The basic course is free and you need to pay a subscription to access more content. It costs €7 per month or €60 per year.
In France, health insurance companies usually cover your bills when the national healthcare system already pays for part of the bill.
For instance, if you get X-Rays for your arm, the national healthcare system will pay for part of the bill, and your health insurance will cover the rest. Usually, if something is not covered by the national healthcare system, your insurance company won’t cover it either.
But Alan wants to differentiate its offering and add more stuff. The Petit Bambou offering is just a test for now. You can get €25 back if you subscribe for six months or a year. It only works once. But Alan is thinking about turning it into a recurring offer if people like the feature.
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Alan introduces Alan Blue, a high-end health insurance product
French startup Alan has been mostly focused on its main health insurance product — a standard package for companies of all sizes and shapes. The company is launching a second offering on this market with Alan Blue.
Companies can now choose between two levels of insurance — Alan Green and Alan Blue. Alan Green is the existing health insurance product with a new name. It still costs the same and offers the same level of coverage. Alan Blue is a higher-end product with better coverage for companies who want to retain talent using better benefits.
French employees automatically get basic coverage from the national healthcare system. But companies also need to provide a health insurance from a private company to pay for part of the health expenses. It’s a hybrid system with a strong legal framework.
This is where Alan comes along as your employer signs a deal with an insurance company to cover all their employees. Usually, insurance companies provide multiple offerings. But Alan has historically focused on a single plan.
With Alan Green, you get good coverage starting at $59 (€50) per month per employee if you’re under 36 years old. It gets more expensive if you’re over 36, and then over 45, and then over 56 years old. Plans for employees over 56 cost $100 per month (€85).
Companies have to pay at least 50 percent of those plans. The rest is deducted from your pay. Some companies also choose to pay 100 percent of everyone’s health insurance to show that they really care about their employees.
Employees can also choose to cover their spouse and kids with Alan. Plans for a second adult cost the same as plans for employees. And you can cover all your kids for a $47 flat monthly fee (€40).
While you won’t pay anything if you see a normal medial practitioner, Alan Green couldn’t necessarily cover an expensive pair of glasses or extensive dental work.
Alan Blue is a second option for companies looking for a premium health insurance product. Companies now have to decide between the two plans for the entire staff. You can’t let employees decide between one plan or the other.
Alan Blue starts at $82 per month (€70) for young employees and also gets more expensive depending on the age of the employee. While there’s only a €20 difference between the two offerings for employees under 36 years old, the price difference is higher the older you get. Similarly, you can cover all your kids for a slightly more expensive $64 flat monthly fee (€55).
For companies that choose to fully pay for health insurance, it depends if you’re willing to spend more to provide better insurance. But some companies only pay part of the health insurance package. Employees will end up paying more if their companies switch from Alan Green to Alan Blue.
“Overall, companies that are growing rapidly tend to invest a lot for their employees and switch to Alan Blue,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian told me. “We already noticed that with companies in our existing clients. Some companies are also switching to Alan because they wanted something very high end before switching.”
Alan still plans to target small companies. The startup thinks that small companies are underserved by big insurance companies and tend to pay more for health insurance.
Alan Green is not going away anytime soon. Samuelian thinks you can combine Alan Green with Alan Map to find the perfect doctor around you and get fully reimbursed.
Alan Blue is already available to selected Alan customers. All companies will be able to sign up in September. You can already view all pricing and insurance details on Alan’s website.
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Alan launches Alan Map to find doctors around you
Health insurance startup Alan has launched a new product in France called Alan Map. It’s a dead simple way to find GPs, dentists, ophthalmologists and more around you.
You first type your address and the name of a doctor or the type of doctor you’re looking for. There’s a big map front and center with dots representing doctors around you.
If you click on a dot or a name in the right column, you can learn more about this doctor. Alan Map currently lists the name, address, phone number, opening hours and average price. You also can find out if you can see this doctor without booking an appointment, and if they accept national healthcare cards.
This is already so much better than searching through a directory. But Alan doesn’t plan to stop there. The company will soon launch an integration with MonDocteur so you can book an appointment from Alan Map directly. MonDocteur is one of the leading healthcare scheduling services in France along with Doctolib.
But compared to Doctolib and MonDocteur, Alan Map doesn’t stop at doctors that use their own scheduling systems. Alan has partnered with the official health directory from France’s national healthcare system. You’ll find more than 245,000 health professionals on Alan Map, with pricing information for nearly half of them.
The main advantage compared to Ameli.fr is that it looks much better and it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for. Design can be important, even for health products. It can be the main difference between an obscure directory on an official website and a useful map.
Eventually, Alan plans to add more data to its mapping product. For instance, as Alan is a health insurance startup, the company knows how much users are paying when they visit a specific doctor. You could anonymize and leverage this data to get exact pricing information.
Alan Map is a free product. It’s a good way to promote the company’s health insurance product and get inbound traffic. For instance, it should give an SEO boost and you might see Alan in your Google search results.
As for Alan users, they can find a doctor and know how much they’ll get back from the national healthcare system and from Alan. This way, there’s no surprise when you get reimbursed.
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Alan raises $28.3 million for its health insurance of the future
French startup Alan closed a $28.3 million Series A round a few months ago. Index Ventures is leading the round, Xavier Niel is participating as well as existing investors CNP Assurances, Partech and Portag3 Ventures LP.
Alan wants to make health insurance as simple as subscribing to a software-as-a-service product. It starts with clear pricing and transparent reimbursement policies. For instance, you can cover a 30-year-old employee for €55 per month.
The price will be exactly the same for all types of companies. The only thing that changes is that you’ll pay a bit less for younger employees and more for older employees. Each employee can choose to cover their significant other for the same price, and their kids for an extra €40 per month.
And then, Alan is following the startup playbook. The overall user experience is much nicer than the interface of a traditional health insurance.
You get a modern dashboard where you can control and view all your health expenses, a mobile app and good customer support. You can also add life insurance from CNP Assurances from the same interface.
This simple promise seems to be working quite well as Alan now covers 7,000 employees across 850 companies. As you can see, the startup has been focusing on small companies as it’s easier to make them switch.
Alan co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian also told me that small companies are underserved by big insurance companies. There’s no reason you should pay more because you work for a small company.
With today’s funding round, Alan wants to offer the same product at scale. The company plans to grow from 22 employees right now to 80 employees by December 2018.
“The goal is to reach €100 million in annual recurring revenue as quickly as possible,” Samuelian told me. The startup currently generates between €5 and €6 million in annual recurring revenue.
Eventually, Alan wants to expand beyond France and address other European markets. While the U.S. seems like a big market, it’s already quite crowded. Samuelian thinks there will be a bigger opportunity by building a European company. It’ll take quite a bit of time as regulation is different in each European country.
Recently, Alan has been focused on building a solid infrastructure, optimizing processes and automating tasks. In many ways, Samuelian still thinks about Alan as a tech company. “We want to build the Apple or Google of Europe,” he said.
Alan can beat competitors on price and flexibility by building a tech product that actually works — that’s how you can serve 7,000 people with a lean team.
Disclosure: I share a personal connection with an executive at CNP Assurances.
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Alan launches mobile app for its health insurance service of the future
French startup Alan is trying the impossible by reinventing health insurance and life insurance. The company just launched its mobile app on iOS and Android. You can now send a bill, say that you’re at the hospital and contact Alan directly from the app. This alone is a big change compared to usual health insurance. For instance, when you’re spending the night at the hospital… Read More
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Health insurance startup Alan adds life insurance
French startup Alan launched a brand new full-stack health insurance last year. This week, the company is launching corporate-owned life insurance so that it can become a one-stop shop for all your corporate insurance needs. When Alan launched its health insurance product, it was the first new one in France in decades. The life insurance market has remained stagnant for years as well. This… Read More
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