Interview with Clark’s Marco Adelt

Marco Adelt is one of the members of the founders’ team of our venture Clark. He brings with him experience in management consulting and insurance brokerage on top of a PhD from the University of Witten/Herdecke and a MBA from the City University Hong Kong. Marco holds the position of Chief Operating Officer and as such orchestrates Clark’s customer service processes and interfaces with more than 160 insurance companies in the market. Moreover, his responsibilities extend to the development of the venture’s product with in-depth industry know-how.

Today, we will interview Marco on Clark’s creation, the business model, and the competitive insurance market.

FinLeap.com: What triggered the creation of Clark?

Marco: The idea started with a well-known pain: you have several contract documents stored in different places and no overview, so quite often important documents are missing. Nowadays, everything is available on the smartphone – from flight tickets to bank accounts. Why shouldn’t the same be true for insurance policies? You are looking for a solution to manage insurance in a simple way. Thus, Clark was founded.

FinLeap.com: Could you describe the business model?

Marco: Clark was founded in June 2015 with the aim to be Europe’s go-to online insurance platform. We are an online broker and provide customers with the key services surrounding insurance: information, advice, optimization, and contract management. Clark combines technology with in-depth insurance know-how to offer a fair, transparent, and customer-focused advice. Our customers can save up to 600 Euro on annual insurance fees.

FinLeap.com: What is a typical customer solution Clark provides?

Marco: Customers often pay too much or don’t have an optimal insurance cover. Insurance is difficult to understand, time-consuming, and complex. Clark eliminates these problems with a digital-driven insurance process from insurance selection to contract closing. Customers are looking for an easy-to-use platform to manage their contracts and have personalized consulting with individual recommendations. Our consultants analyze each contract regarding optimization and saving potential. We do business from a customer’s point of view and even make the commissions we earn on their contracts transparent to our customers.

FinLeap.com: What gives Clark the competitive edge in the market?

Marco: Without any doubt: It’s our team! Compared with our competitors, Clark has a more senior and more diversified team. We are combining entrepreneurship with cutting-edge technology skills and in-depth best-in-class industry know-how. More successfully than any of our competitors, we can deliver insurance specific automations. Our work approach is driven by an uncompromising execution culture. We are able to implement new ideas and features faster than any other player.

FinLeap.com: How does your experience at Clark differ from your past professional experiences?

Marco: Not so much. The past nine years I worked as a Management Consultant for insurance companies and brokers. In that context, my job was to find smart solutions for complex problems and to execute defined measures as efficiently as possible. I do the same at the moment. However, there is one major difference compared to my past experience: As a Management Consultant I traveled most of the time. Now, I am able to see my wife and my two children almost every day.

FinLeap.com: What is something Clark is going to have to do in the future to keep up with the changing InsurTech trends?

Marco: Our product is already up and running. Within three months, we developed our app, which is available for iOS and Android. Very good customer feedback encouraged us to start a TV campaign with our investor Pro7/Sat1. In the future, we will improve our “feed” in the app and expand our app intelligence in the form of a robo-advisor.

FinLeap.com: What impact does Clark have on the insurance market?

Marco: The insurance market in Germany has a size of EUR 192bn. That is massive, e.g. 20x the smartphone market or 4.5x the e-commerce market. 95% of the insurance market is still offline and customer satisfaction is low. It really does not get much better than this. Based on customer-centric and digital services, we have designed a vision that aims to change the industry. But we are realistic: Startup online brokers like Clark are just at the beginning with none appreciable combined market shares.