Qüilo - Democratizing insurance and health in Latin America.

There are more than 400 million people in Latin America that aren't bancarized, thus without easy ways to access financial services like health insurance. Qüilo is a platform that integrates insurance companies and massive channels of distribution in order to distribute low-cost and easy-access health insurance and other financial services. Our solution is a digital platform that is fast, secure, intuitive, and transparent. It’s fast in the quote and purchase, it’s easy to use and intuitive, and most importantly, it’s fair, only paying for what you want and use, easy cancellation and with no hidden fees. Our five operational pillars include the product development, education and distribution of our products, user administration and recollection of premiums, development of technology for our providers and users, and we follow-up on the claims and use process of our products.

Traditionally, health insurance has not been accessible or easy to understand for a large part of the population in Latin America (around 400 million people are unbancarized). This, in addition that there are no easy channels to acquire them, makes the problem bigger. The lack of access to health insurance nor an easy acquisition in Guatemala and Latin America is a problem that millions of people suffer everyday . People who are at the base of the pyramid don’t have the resources to cover the immediate expenses related to accidentes, emergencies, sickness, or death, which means that in most of the cases they are indebted with a lender who charges them more than 20% of monthly interest. This strengthens the poverty cycle, causing more economic stagnation and poverty in millions of people.

In Latin America, there are more than 400 million people who are not bancarized and thus, without easy access to financial services such as insurance. Just in Guatemala, our first country to cover, there are around 2.5 million people living in this situation, who currently don't have health insurance and live with a restricted access to quality financial services.

At Qüilo, we focus on three main product lines. The first line is Qüilo Business, aimed to complement the inefficient social security service with customized plans and a platform to follow up on the employees and their families' health. The second line is Qüilo Hogar, focused on more than 250 thousand house workers in Guatemala who are invisible to the social health programs. And third, is Qüilo para Ti, focused on individuals working both in the formal and informal economy. 

Our solution is a digital platform that is fast, secure, intuitive, and transparent. It’s fast in the quote and purchase, it’s easy to use and intuitive, and most importantly, it’s fair, only paying for what you want and use and with no hidden costs. Our platform adds a layer of technology that makes the insuring process more effective and paperless, reducing costs and making a scalable process to reach more people. This platform also verifies and authenticates users, integrates with the insurance companies to issue the insurance policy, recollects premiums, and teaches financial education to users as well as how to use their health plans.

Our five operational pillars include the product development, education and distribution of our products, user administration and recollection of premiums, development of technology for our providers and users, and we follow-up on the claims and use process of our products.

The financial and insurance industry has been dominated by big insurance companies and brokers for many decades in Latin America and they have focused on selling to a very small niche of people who understand insurance and can pay high premiums. The distribution of microinsurance and massive insurance products has happen only through banks and/or credit cards, leaving most of the uninsured population without an easy way to learn and acquire quality health insurance.

At Qüilo, we understand that one of the main reasons why people don't have a financial prevention plan is the lack of education and high friction of product acquisition through big institutions like banks. The technology that we've developed at Qüilo makes the insuring process more efficient, thus better cost structure and less expensive health insurance. We ensure that customers are authenticated and verified, learn about their plan, and a more general understanding on building a better financial prevention plan.

We differentiate from our competitors in multiple areas such as:

1. We are the first to be digitizing insurance selling processes in Guatemala and Central America.
2. Our platform is easy to use, intuitive and accessible for everyone.
3. We have a multidisciplinary team with many years of experience in tech development and tech scalability.
4. Our technology is developed in-house and adapts to the necessities of every product and insurance company.
5. Our brand is memorable and friendly, away from traditional players in the industry.

Our platform uses AI and machine learning to provide accurate user authentication and verification, a friendly user experience, advance recommendations, integration with multiple companies, and usage analysis. We are developing our own algorithms to do this and advancing the financial industry to provide a more efficient insuring process.

At Qüilo we're addressing a real problem with a real solution. We've managed to create the right partnerships to scale across Latin America and currently are developing the tools and technology to expand rapidly in the next years. We're getting to a more strong product market fit and positively impacting low-income people without previous access to financial services. Our solution is also getting more accepted by both insurance companies and other companies with already built distribution networks where we are going to expand faster.

Our aim is to break the poverty cycle when people get in debt because of any emergency, accident, sickness, or death, by educating and building a well planned financial life.

We're currently serving around 2,000 people with our solution and expecting to be serving more than 30,000 in one year and more than one million in the next five years in multiple countries in Latin America.

Within the next year (2019) we'll finish developing our core technology and product market fit, and staying in Guatemala for this time. We'll start expanding to other countries in Central America in 2020 and within the next five years to México, the Caribbean, and South America. Within this time, we'll be impacting more than one million low-income people in Latin America. Of those, around 50% will be accessing insurance for the first time and at least 20% will be low-income women.

Next Year

For the next year we are still figuring out the best education and distribution strategy to reach more people faster. A big barrier is that we need to educate our users about the importance of having a good financial life. Latin America is one of the least insured regions in the world and uninsured people sometimes doesn't even know what insurance is. Another big barrier is the openness of traditional insurance companies to open to new technologies and markets.

Five Years

As with almost any startup that wants to scale, financial barriers are one of the most important barriers to overcome. We know that in order to scale and impact millions of people, we'll need to commit many financial resources in order to expand faster and to more countries. Another big barrier, is to recruit people who are also committed with the vision and can contribute to it. As we scale, finding the right people gets more difficult.

Next Year

To overcome these barriers we're building good partnerships both with insurance companies and distribution channels in order to scale locally and internationally. We're also breaking barriers for them to adopt new technologies and integrate them in their companies. Regarding education, we're testing multiple models to reach more communities in a more efficient way.

Five Years

Financial barriers is something that we have to structure accordingly as we scale and open new markets. What we're doing now to prepare for that is build a strong product market fit and business model so we can raise funds and use internal revenue to fund growth. To solve the recruiting barrier, we're focusing a lot on our culture and branding so we can hire more efficiently and attract great talent.

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We are a team of 10 full-time staff.

We are a multidisciplinary team with different and complementary skills. On the tech side, our CTO has more than 14 years of experience and has built technologies and apps that have reached thousands of people. On the insurance and commercialization, we also have managers and experts with many years of experience and scalable results in the industry. And as for the management and leadership, I have developed successful businesses before.

Besides our operational team, we have advisors and partners with many more years of experience and generating social impact.

Operations: We currently work with 9 insurance companies and 4 health providers. 

Social Impact: We have a partnership and investment form Alterna, a non-profit organization in Central America, backed by the IDB.

At Qüilo, we partner and develop products with insurance companies; we develop an acquisition model and user administration, recollection of insurance premiums, development of technology, and insurance claims follow-up. Our revenue share varies from product to product but on average we earn 30% of the premium.

We're positively impacting the communities we work with by providing easy access and quality health insurance at an affordable cost. Many of our users are being insured for the first time and are able to save more than 20 times what they pay monthly for the insurance. We are providing life and accident insurance, medical expenses coverage, unlimited medic consultations with a general doctor, pediatrician, or gynecologist, medical exams, dental services, ambulance, and funeral coverage. On average, our users can save from $75 to $600 with a monthly premium of $7.

On one specific product line, Qüilo Hogar, we focus on covering low-income women who haven't had access to health insurance before.

Our business model ensures sustainability and scalability on itself on the medium and long term though the selling of our products to our users.

On the short term, we are sustainable through the selling of our products, raised investment capital, and grants.  

We are applying to Solve to expand our network and find people who have created projects impacting millions of people, get feedback and get help in order to create a more impactful project. Exposing our project to an outside network broadens our opportunities to make more meaningful partnerships that can help us expand and scale to more communities.

1. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

2. Development Banks

3. Financial institutions focused on financial inclusion

4. Companies with massive channels of distribution

In order to reach scale in a sustainable way, we are incorporating AI into three main processes at Qüilo.

First, we use AI to authenticate and accurately identify our users and make us compliant to the supervising entities. We do this by using AI in biometric and matching IDs with the user, having a 95-98% accuracy.

Second, we use AI to recommend the best programs and health plans according to the user profile.

And third, we are incorporating AI into the customer support in order to have an immediate answer to any emergency or customer question.

We would use this prize to grow our development team and continue improving our technology.

At Qüilo, our mission is to protect and help underserved communities and provide them with financial and health tools accessible to them anywhere. We've partnered with insurers and health providers in Guatemala to have a national coverage, both in urban and rural areas, with hundreds of doctors, clinics and hospitals available.

Nevertheless, we know that there are communities in more remote areas that still don't have easy access to these services; thus, we currently have the solution to have medical appointments by phone and are in the process of incorporating telemedicine into our services.

This prize will help us advance accelerate the development this technology and implementing a quicker rollout to these remote underserved communities.

In Latin America, the most underserved populations are low-income women who not only suffer from lack of resources but are also victims of gender inequality and male chauvinism.

At Qüilo, we want to empower women and help them achieve a life of health and financial stability. Our products are aimed to help them have accesible healthcare, diseases prevention, and financial tools and education to achieve a more stable financial life. For example, Qüilo Hogar, is aimed at more than 250 thousand house workers in Guatemala who currently are invisible to the healthcare system. We are proving them with health plans that include life and accident insurance, unlimited medical consultations, prevention exams, dental services, ambulance, and funeral services.

We also focus on educating them about their plan and general financial knowledge to help them build a savings and pension plan. Below you can see a promotional video and the story of one of our users, Fidelina.

This price will help us diffuse further our solution, integrate more programs and benefits, and reach more underserved communities.

Qüilo Hogar: https://bit.ly/2K1Jqg6

Story of Fidelina Pérez: https://youtu.be/g6i4xdAetzM

In Latin America, the most underserved populations are low-income women who not only suffer from lack of resources but are also victims of gender inequality and male chauvinism.

At Qüilo, we want to empower women and help them achieve a life of health and financial stability. Our products are aimed to help them have accesible healthcare, diseases prevention, and financial tools and education to achieve a more stable financial life. For example, Qüilo Hogar, is aimed at more than 250 thousand house workers in Guatemala who currently are invisible to the healthcare system. We are proving them with health plans that include life and accident insurance, unlimited medical consultations, prevention exams, dental services, ambulance, and funeral services.

We also focus on educating them about their plan and general financial knowledge to help them build a savings and pension plan. Below you can see a promotional video and the story of one of our users, Fidelina.

This price will help us diffuse further our solution, integrate more programs and benefits, and reach more underserved communities.

Qüilo Hogar: https://bit.ly/2K1Jqg6

Story of Fidelina Pérez: https://youtu.be/g6i4xdAetzM