Q&A with CEO of Kidbrooke, Fredrick Daveus

In the second in our series of blogs going behind the scenes on Insurtech Isle of Man’s new Insurtech Accelerator Program, we hear from Fredrik Davéus, CEO of Kidbrooke.

Founded in 2011 in London, Kidbrooke is now headquartered in Stockholm, while retaining their presence in the UK. Having spent over 15 years working in quantitative risk management, the founders created Kidbrooke initially as a consulting business. In 2019, Kidbrooke became a tech company providing scalable financial software for financial institutions of all shapes and sizes.

CEO Fredrik has been there since the start of the journey.

Q1 – Tell us a bit about yourself and your business

I am from a technical and financial background, and spent some time working in capital markets in London before we founded Kidbrooke. The company was initially set up as a consulting firm, but from 2019, we changed direction to turn it into a product and software company. We are a small team of 10 people and are entirely self-funded. We typically work with larger financial institutions such as incumbent banks, insurance companies, and wealth managers, either directly or so they are able to integrate our software into their existing platforms.

We provide a simulation engine as part of our service and we manage all calibration of risk factors of our investment products. We provide an application programming interface (API), meaning that our clients are free to build out the user experience themselves. We built our product to be able to work efficiently and effectively with existing large banks, while still being flexible enough to support the individual needs of the companies and customers. Typical use cases include forecasting and risk calculation of future financial decisions for a range of future plans and life outcomes – this can include pensions, insurance and saving for your children’s future etc.

Q2 - Why did you apply for the Insurtech Accelerator Program?

We had previously applied to F10 programs and when we saw this latest program, we knew we wanted to get involved. To get the chance to work with F10 again, we knew it would be great quality due to their knowledge of the wealth and insurance sector. The program was also a great way to open our eyes and minds to the Isle of Man as a jurisdiction that we hadn’t previous considered, and to physically get to the Island and see the landscape of insurance businesses was really interesting. So we decided to apply due to a combination of working with F10 again and to get the chance to work with a new jurisdiction and learn more about the Isle of Man as an international financial centre.

Q3 - How have you found the Program so far?

One of the main aims for us is to scope out new business. So from that perspective, the ability to network – especially with the Isle of Man Government, the regulator, and the established businesses on the Island – was a great aspect to the program. Networking is invaluable for a company at our stage, so to meet with so many companies with similar issues and challenges in a collaborative environment was a great experience.

On the commercial side of things, as a company we need to think long-term, especially as we are still developing. There's a lot of infrastructure development we are still in the early stages of, so for us it’s all about meeting new people, understanding what challenges they have and how we can refine our offering based on their guidance and work together to find solutions.

Q4 - Have you found anything particularly interesting or challenging on the Program?

We really enjoyed the introduction to the Isle of Man Government and the fact that they were so open and welcoming. They gave us access to people and institutions such as the regulator which was great and so unique to have experienced such a supportive relationship.

On the corporate side, it can be very hard to know what to expect when you enter into a new jurisdiction, but we soon realized that the issues many of the other businesses are facing are the same as ours, and we can work together to think about how to solve them. We can then take away those lessons as a company, as well as looking to consolidate the relationships we have already built on the Island.

Q5 - What are your future plans for your business?

Our product went live in 2020, so 2021 was about building out the product and identifying different customer segments and regions. We are now in a phase where we have some very good projects in the pipeline so we are looking to close some of those and then are also looking at where else we operate.

We currently work predominately in the UK and the Nordic countries, but we are also looking at Switzerland and other places in Europe. We want to continue working with the UK and German speaking markets and to also look into new areas such as the Middle East.

The Insurtech space has undergone a lot of change recently, however we think the wealth space, including pensions and investments are where the next big changes are going to happen. This is likely to take the form of more automation, particularly as building in programs manually can be very expensive for organisations. We can’t carry on as business as usual and so we need to be smart about automation, not just in the mundane tasks, but so that it can be embedded into business practices.