PolicyStreet Obtained BNM Approval

PolicyStreet announced today that it has obtained approval from Bank Negara Malaysia to conduct financial advisory. With this approval, PolicyStreet can source, aggregate, compare, customise and finally advise consumers and businesses on the best insurance products that meet their needs.

According to its press release, it has at its disposal the ability to work directly with all 47 life and general insurance and takaful providers in Malaysia.

PolicyStreet’s Chief Executive Officer Lee Yen Ming commented.

“We often find that insurance providers tend to have many competing products that cater to different segments of customers. For example, Insurer A might offer a life product suited for customers above 40 years old and insurer B on the other hand offers a more compelling life product for the younger customers aged below 30 years old.

Aggregation will not enable us to advise the right products to different target customers but FA will. We want to advise customers without prejudice and we will marry technology and innovation to remove ‘fats’ in the ecosystem by driving transparency and simplicity in insurance.”

Yen Ming also added that PolicyStreet initially intended to to apply for the sandbox to trial for aggregation of insurance products but opted for the Financial Advisory approval instead when they discovered that they are able to meet the requirements.

There were three companies approved to experiment with insurance aggregation in BNM sandbox - among the three, GetCover is listed as “ceased operations”.

In just over 2 years of operations, PolicyStreet claims that it has underwritten over MYR400 million in sum assured and sold more than 10,000 policies.

It claims that it has also worked with more than 100 companies, organizations and groups in curating products to identify business pain points and curate products to enhance their business models.

To name a few, PolicyStreet has collaborated with the leading mobile food delivery marketplace Foodpanda, proptech HostelHunting, co-working space Co-labs of the Paramount Group, women-focused ride-hailing app RidingPink, traveltech Adventoro, Commerce.Asia and MDEC.

It has also raised US$500,000 in seed funding from KK Fund, an ASEAN-based Venture Capitalist and was a recipient of a government grant from Cradle Fund.