Colin Wong, Founder, Portfoplus
PortfoPlus owes its origin to a tragic story of Colin Wong’s relatives, a young couple who was returning from their vacation at Okinawa. When the couple was on the way to Okinawa airport, the husband suddenly passed out and fell unconscious. For emergency help, the wife needed the insurance bought by her husband. But she had no clue where and how to locate the details of the insurance coverage. So, while taking care of the husband who slipped into coma, she had to make hundreds of long-distance phone calls to all possible insurance companies in Hong Kong for locating the policy details. Unfortunately, the husband passed away after one day.
This unfortunate incidence compelled Colin to think — how difficult it is to keep track of insurance policies especially during the time of emergency. He realized that most of the people in Asia are having a huge headache to manage their insurance policies. And this prompted him to build a platform where people can consolidate all their insurance policies on-hand in one place, and share the portfolio information to the loved ones. As a result, PortfoPlus incepted in 2018 to help people connect with their consultants and caring service and share the policy with their family so that they can ask for help in an emergency.
A Truly Tailor-Made Insurance Technology Platform
“It is very common that people having the insurance but are not “protected” because they forgot what insurances they bought, not to mention to seek insurance companies for help in case of emergency. Some of those are not even aware of the existence of the insurance policy. In the case of my relative, she even did not know the existence of certain policies her husband possessed,” avers Colin.
To help people overcome this hassle, PortfoPlus offers an integrated electronic platform that allows people to manage policies from any insurer in one place. The insurance technology platform performs a comprehensive personal analysis of the user insurance portfolio by using powerful technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence and enables the insurance advisors to better understand the needs of the users and give unbiased professional advice.
“We help insurance advisers to fully ‘know their customer’, and customers can fully ‘know their coverage.’ We are getting more and more traction as we are able to help insurance advisers to generate more businesses by generating insightful analysis from the client’s insurance portfolio using the latest technology,” states Colin.
As almost everything is going digital and paperless with the rise of Insur-tech, PortfoPlus consolidates and digitalizes end-users’ insurance policies irrespective of insurers or policy type.
“Our mission is ‘know your coverage, be well protected’, which well-describe our vision which is to build a society where everyone understands their protection needs and be well protected by their insurance,” says Colin.
Addressing the Pain Points of Users As Well As Insurance Advisers
PortfoPlus makes use of technology to improve the quality of insurance service. But it understands that people still prefer being served by a human than a cold robot. So, instead of completely replacing insurance advisors with the technology, it helps them to adopt the new technology trend and offer better services with an added human touch. Thus, it makes a beneficial platform for both end-users and insurance advisers.
“End-users love us as we are solving their problem of existing policies in a mass. On top of that, PortfoPlus connects insurance advisers with their clients to enable better, faster and more professional services. We always believe a platform that enables a win-win situation is exciting and fulfilling,” explains Colin.
That means a user can get better insurance advice, buy more coverage, and the adviser can get more business through a single platform.
Planning to Expand Further into Southeast Asia Region
“We believe PortfoPlus has a social value. What we are doing is to increase people’s awareness of their insurance protection needs, and help the society to be more resilient to unexpected events or even disaster,” says Colin.
PortfoPlus was selected as a member of the Microsoft BizSpark program at the beginning.
Then it joined the startup school organized by world-leading accelerator Y combinator. And now, it is under the incubation program of Hong Kong Cyberport as well as The University of Hong Kong entrepreneurship program.
In the coming years, after building a strong foundation in Hong Kong, the company plans to spread its roots to other South East Asia countries and offer better services.
“The future we see is a world where people use PortfoPlus to manage their insurance portfolio, and never feel unsecured when unexpected events happened,” sums up Colin.
