Why Sie Ventures invested in Anansi
The rapid growth of online sales, now accounting for a third of the UK retail market, has resulted in a spike of missing, damaged and delayed goods. The pandemic in particular has resulted in an increased percentage of delayed items, which leads to bad customer reviews. Despite 81% of merchants experiencing challenges around lost and delayed items, 90% of goods in transit are currently under-or uninsured.
The current state of e-commerce insurance
Despite the rise of e-commerce, many retailers currently don’t take out delivery insurance even though they are the party bearing the loss. This is due to the fact that the cost tends to outweigh the value of the lost or damaged item. The current claims process is very labour intensive and inefficient, highlighting the need for new solutions that are fit for purpose. Filing a claim is manual, time consuming and the maximum amount that can be claimed back is £25 per item ordered. Anansi uses shipping tracking data and parametric claim-triggers to automate the creation and reimbursement of a claim. This provides a much faster claims process than traditional insurers with touch-free claims improving customer satisfaction and open-banking enabling quicker pay-outs.
How is Anansi solving this?
The goods-in-transit insurance market is worth $71bn annually. Anansi’s embedded technology enables retailers to automatically protect their goods up to the full retail value, avoid cumbersome manual claims experiences and protect their customer delivery experience. Their customer base ranges from third-party logistics providers and freight forwarders to e-commerce marketplaces and online retailers, all of which can access Anansi’s platform via API and offer insurance directly to their customers.
In the near future, Anansi is focussing on accelerating its expansion across Europe. More specifically, it will be authorised in Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain and Belgium by the end of 2023. The long-term growth plans see integrations with other platforms and new product features, such as multi-currency billing, worldwide tracking and smart expected delivery dates. All of the above will fuel their expansion to North America (starting in 2024).
How we met the Anansi team
Nicole first met Anansi’s co-founder, Megan Bingham-Walker, in 2020. Megan was then invited to join our first cohort of Sie Catalyst Program in 2021, where we built a great relationship with herself and her co-founder Ana Martins de Carvalho (this was before Sie was investing). Since day one, we have been extremely impressed with their ability to tackle a hugely male-dominated industry — with a well known lack of representation — while they navigate obstacles with such grace. We also love that they share the Sie Ventures desire to build a diverse cap table. We can only be excited about where this team will take Anansi next!
