down 52%. Some fintechs, like buy-now-pay-later leader Affirm Holdings, have fallen nearly 90% from their 2021 highs.
WeFox currently operates in five, soon to be six, European countries and plans to use the new capital infusion to expand into the United States and Asia. “We’re at critical size, we've proven the unit economics and we do believe that we can roll this out on a global scale,” WeFox CEO Julian Teicke said in an interview with. “We could do with additional capital because we have a well-oiled machine, we know exactly where to invest.
Teicke says WeFox has distinguished itself among startups because its operations are already profitable, thanks, in part, to a diversified revenue model. The WeFox platform connects customers with human brokers who sell policies from outside providers then takes a cut of the broker’s commission. It also provides a handful of its own policies, including auto, private liability, and household contents insurance. Those directly written policies accounted for 25% of the company’s $350 million in revenue last year. The advantage of blending direct and indirect underwriting approaches is that WeFox gets the first look at, and the ability to serve, the lowest risk customers. Those who aren’t offered WeFox policies are referred to providers with a higher risk tolerance.
“We can really make sure that on our own book we only do the cherry picking, meaning we only get the most profitable customers in the lines where we think we can reduce loss ratios and operate more profitable in the market,” Teicke says.