PolicyStreet is solving microinsurance’s relevance problem, not just its price problem.
Microinsurance has never lacked for affordability. What it has too often lacked is relevance. An RM3 personal accident policy sold identically to a delivery rider, a microloan borrower and a used-car buyer is cheap by design and generic by consequence, and the industry’s stubbornly low utilisation and renewal figures across the region say as much. Cover that never gets claimed is not protection, but a policy in name only.
PolicyStreet’s PurposeProtect Framework, which won this year’s Innovative Microinsurance Product, is built around that diagnosis. Rather than engineering a separate product for every underserved segment, PolicyStreet begins with an affordable micro-personal accident base layer and configures benefits around the specific risks of each community. That single architecture now supports 12 distinct product variants without fragmenting the underlying economics.
The configuration is where the thinking shows. Gig workers receive hospital income support and cover for work equipment and personal effects, the tools that determine whether income resumes after an incident, while caregiving professionals on Kiddocare receive professional indemnity. DirectCare+ pairs accident cover with loan repayment support in the event of unemployment for microloan borrowers, as does CARSOME Care+ for second-hand vehicle owners. In each case, the benefit is anchored to the customer’s actual financial vulnerability.
Distribution follows a hybrid logic. Embedded partnerships with foodpanda, ShopeeFood, SPX Express, Kiddocare, CARSOME, and Direct Lending activate cover as users onboard or transact, removing the awareness and friction barriers that defeat most voluntary microinsurance. But PolicyStreet has been candid that embedded cover only protects customers during platform activity. foodpanda Protect+, a 24/7 plan starting at RM3 monthly that riders can extend to family members, addresses the gap. Importantly, it tests whether this segment will pay voluntarily for protection it understands.
The scale is substantial. PurposeProtect has covered close to one million gig workers in its own right, and feeds a wider portfolio that has distributed over 100 million policies, reached more than 10 million individuals across Malaysia, and safeguards over US$10bn in total sum insured.
More telling, though, is how success is measured. Alongside conventional loss ratios, PolicyStreet now assesses whether benefits are actually being utilised by the communities they target, feeding those findings back into pricing and benefit design. Collaborative underwriting with platform partners supplies the behavioural data; a proprietary in-house claims and case management platform supplies the operational capacity to process volume without diluting service.
