Baloise : Mobile insurer 'Friday' launched

At its Investor Day at the end of October 2016, Baloise revealed that it was creating a new kind of insurance company with the working title 'Mobile Insurer'. Named 'Friday', the Berlin-based insurance start-up operates with a high level of autonomy and will enter the market in the first quarter of 2017 with a motor vehicle insurance policy.

Friday is geared to customers' desire for informality, simplicity and enjoyment of life and creates an excellent digital experience. 'Thanks to simple processes and various product innovations, Friday ushers in a new era compared to the user experience offered by existing insurance services. Baloise hopes that Friday will enable it to become Germany's most popular mobile insurer by 2021,' says Gert De Winter, CEO of the Baloise Group.

The company's new CEO will be Christoph Samwer. In his most recent role, he was managing director and a co-founder of Lendico, an international online lending marketplace for consumer and business loans. At the same time, he was chairman of the board of directors of Lendico Schweiz AG, a joint venture with PostFinance. Samwer studied business administration at the University of Mannheim, Germany, and Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. In 2013, he graduated with a doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) from the Technical University of Munich. From 2009 to 2013, he worked for McKinsey in Munich, where the companies that he looked after included banks and insurers. For the past four years, he has also been advising and supporting fledgling start-ups. He will take up his post at Friday on 1 March 2017. Samwer will be supported by the CMO, Florian Eismann (30), who most recently was responsible for the marketing and product departments at the digital broker FinanceFox, of which he was also a co-founder. The management team is complemented by Silvan Saxer (40), CTO, an insurance specialist from Baloise and by Mathias Nestler (27), COO, also a digital expert from the start-up scene.