Acquiring Insurance Approvals can be Difficult
To scale our vision and product, we need to acquire insurance approvals in Europe, meaning DVN in Denmark, SSF in Sweden, and ART in the Netherlands. All three approvals are quite similar in their approach, requirements, and tests. But there is one big issue: all of them require a lock that blocks the wheel.
Most of us would agree that a bicycle with a traditional frame lock can easily be lifted and dragged away even though it locks the wheel. The lock can then easily be cut and removed in a matter of seconds using the right tool.
The question is: is this more secure than Pentalock’s locking solution?
The Pentalock Locking Solution
The bike lock from Pentalock does not lock the wheel, period. But it does lock the pedals in both directions, has a smart alarm system that detects bike theft, and has a design that makes it impossible for thieves to cut and remove the lock as it is integrated into the bike frame. On top of that, PentaLock also has an auto-lock function that makes sure you cannot forget to lock the bike. And with our electronic system, more features will be added in the future to offer full security and convenience for the bike owner.
But as it stands right now, PentaLock still cannot achieve a traditional insurance approval, as this requires the rules and regulations to be changed from the point of the insurance companies.
This is set up as a bureaucratic system, where there are several actors involved in the decision-making, making things move slowly and inefficiently.
Involving Insurance Companies from the Beginning
The first goal of PentaLock was to gain insurance approval on our home market, Denmark. We found that in order to gain this it was much easier to talk directly to every single insurance company on the market.
We started on the Danish market in 2016 by involving insurance companies in the design phase to accommodate, and understand their business case and mindsets.
Today, we have been in dialogue with multiple insurance companies in Denmark: Tryg, Alka, Alm. Brand, Top Danmark, Codan, LB Forsikring, PFA, Runa, Bauta, GF, Gjensidige, and IF. Our dialogue with these 12 insurance companies have lead to direct approval from all. This means, that at this moment, we have +90% coverage of the Danish market.
Only insurance companies with less than 1% market share are left, and we expect to have full direct insurance coverage by the end of the year. And then our goal has been achieved.
A New Future for the Bike Security Market
We hope that this is the start of a movement of innovation in the bike security market. The hope that the great results we have received on the Danish market will spare us from dialogues with every single insurance company in Europe. Our hope is also that SSF in Sweden and ART in the Netherlands will be more assisting than DVN.
Gaining approvals from DVN, SSF and ART is an uphill battle for us. It requires a lot of bureaucratics and lobbyism to change the rulesets of the insurance companies, so we can gain overall coverage.