Insurtech startup Luko acquires Coya and gains insurance license

French startup Luko is acquiring German startup Coya in order to grow its European presence and get an insurance license from German regulator. While Luko isn’t disclosing terms of the deal, the company says it’s a 100% share deal, which means that Coya investors are now Luko investors. Those investors include Valar Ventures, Headline and Roland Berger’s family office.

Luko started as a home insurance company for both homeowners and renters. It’s a big market as you have to prove that your home is insured when you rent or buy a home in France. Since then, the company has expanded with new insurance products and services.

Compared to traditional insurance companies, Luko has chosen a direct-to-customer model. People sign up on Luko’s website or in the company’s app directly.

After that, Luko tries to be as efficient as possible. You can chat with the company in the app directly. When the insurance pays you back, it tries to send you the money as quickly as possible. For instance, you can receive money instantly on a Lydia account.

When it comes to transparency, Luko takes a 30% cut on monthly payments. Everything else is pooled together to pay compensation. If there’s money left at the end of the year, you can choose to donate your portion of what’s left of the 70% share.

And the startup has been quite successful. It has attracted 220,000 customers — in particular, the customer base has doubled between November 2020 and November 2021. Luko started accepted clients in Spain a few months ago as well.

Coya, on the other hand, offers various insurance products for the German market. Insurance products include home content, private liability, dog liability and bike insurance.

Following today’s acquisition, Coya is going to be called Luko Insurance AG. Coya’s 80,000 clients are joining Luko’s customer base, which means that Luko now has 300,000 clients in total.

More importantly, Coya has obtained an insurance license in Germany. Luko is going to leverage that license across all its markets thanks to European passporting rules. This way, Luko controls a bigger chunk of the insurance stack.

Up next, Luko has ambitious goals as it plans to build a European leader in the insurtech startup space. The company plans to hire 100 new employees this year alone. By 2023, the startup wants to reach one million customers.