Ripe Thinking today reports a 16 per cent increase in revenue for 2019. For the year ended 31 December 2019, the Manchester-based insurtech specialist reported record revenues of £15.043 million compared to £12.975 million for the prior year. The company has now delivered average annual revenue growth of over 20% over the past five years. In yet another strong year, which marked Ripe’s twelfth consecutive year of growth, underlying EBITDA rose by 41% to £2.52 million from £1.79 million in 2018. During the year, Ripe passed the 225,000 policyholder mark, making it one of the UK’s largest niche insurtechs.
Growth across all product lines
Throughout 2019, all Ripe products experienced growth as the company expanded product offerings in response to customer needs. In the last 12 months, they launched two new products aimed at the growing UK leisure market: Ripe Insurance for Touring Caravans and Ripe Insurance for Static Caravans. The new products are underwritten by the UK’s largest insurance company, Aviva, who in 2019 became Ripe’s new long-term capacity partner.
Investment in staff & techRipe recently launched a bespoke multi-million-pound technology platform, ‘Juice’. Designed in-house over the last two years and using cutting-edge technologies, the cloud-based platform has been created to be flexible and scalable enough to realise Ripe’s growth strategy. In 2019, a further £445,000 was invested in Research & Development and staff numbers grew by 6% from 61 to 65.
Coronavirus & the future
Following the Covid-19 outbreak, Ripe successfully invoked its business continuity protocols from mid-March 2020. Trading performance over the first half of 2020 shows that Ripe remained ahead of budget and has continued to deliver impressive monthly trading figures at policyholder, revenue and EBITDA levels. Commenting on the results, Colin Whitehead, Executive Chairman of Ripe Thinking, said:
“We are very pleased to have delivered growth across our business metrics in what is a tough, competitive market. The results demonstrate the strength of our marketing and data driven model that puts the customer at the forefront of everything we do. We’ve continued to invest in the latest technologies to allow customers to get a quote fast and buy all of our products through conversion optimised, mobile-enabled e-commerce websites.
“Since the onset of the pandemic, our attention has been on addressing the impact on our staff, customers and partners. We’re confident we can withstand the current disruption. Our figures so far in 2020 are promising and show the resilience of both our business model and our policyholders.”
Ripe products distinguish themselves from the competition with a build-your-own model where customers only pay for the cover they need, unlike many insurers who offer pre-bundled packages. Using Ripe technology, customers can build a bespoke policy to cover their exact needs, buy online and receive policy documents all within a few clicks.
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