Zego raises £1M to give gig-economy drivers a pay-as-you-go insurance platform

The gig economy, as we know, is big and just getting bigger. But companies like Uber and Deliveroo have a huge problem and it’s called insurance. How do you insure all these workers and how do the workers cover themselves in the gig economy? Step in Zego.

This London startup has just raised just over £1 million in seed funding from investors, including LocalGlobe, with FTSE 100 company Aviva, for a product aimed at delivery drivers who use their cars, .

Zego is an “insurtech” company – an insurance product distributed by a tech platform/app. The app manages all the customer’s requirements from sales, payment management, and the backend processes, and then links all that data to the insurance/capacity providers. In this case Aviva, initially. The backend platform also automates many of the broker processes, reducing the expenses and additional costs between the insured and the capacity provider.

The platforms also timestamps exactly when the drivers are working/not working, links that to the insurer, and thus ensures that the drivers have suitable insurance coverage for the work that they are doing. It is literally pay as you go insurance.

While Cuvva is a similar product, Zego says it is not a competitor because that is for leisure use and this is for delivery purposes, which is a more tightly regulated market.

Fees for the scooter policy start from 65p an hour up to £25 a week, while insuring a car can cost as little as £1 an hour. To date, Zego has written 400,000 hours of cover for drivers.

Zego’s founders are Harry Franks who worked at a senior level at Deliveroo and before that luxury rental business onefinestay; Sten Saar worked for onefinestay and later developed operations at Deliveroo; and Stuart Kelly was lead developer at Mainframe and then head of engineering at start-up Hubble.