CFO of King Price, Paul Stedall.
King Price Insurance is the first insurer in South Africa to cover a commercial fleet of electric vehicles (EVs).
ESG Global reached out to Paul Stedall, CFO at King Price, to ask him three clever questions on personal principles, EV underwriting and claims data and pro bono insurance.
When you first became involved in this deal, what was the one personal principle or conviction that came to mind?
Honestly it was less around the ESG aspects and more about supporting young CA(SA)’s looking to disrupt a very mature market, being the short-haul logistics market. The three founders had worked under me previously, while completing their articles, so there was a level of trust in them as individuals.
To which global markets will the generated data be sent and what do you see as the end-use of such locally-generated data?
Our reinsurers in Zurich and Munich are using the underwriting (aka insurance pricing) and claims data as part of their data for better understanding cover for vehicles of this nature and used in this line of trade. This will ultimately assist in their underwriting processes globally for EV fleets.
King Price initially insured Everlectric 5 demo Maxus vehicles pro bono, according to your recent post on LinkedIn. Has this been done before – and what was the rationale for doing it this time around?
No it hasn’t (in our space at least!). We’ve built a business based off internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, with our own and market available data. The rationale behind the pro bono insuring was to support a startup during a proof-of-concept process of 18 months, where we could gather data, while they proved their concept to DHL and Woolworths (and other potential customers). As mentioned earlier, I knew the founders – and the focus was on protecting their startup capital at risk (of R800k per vehicle = R4 million) It was a risk that we could ’tolerate’ within a larger portfolio and it would either:
- Cost us a small amount of ’school fees’, or,
- As has turned out to be the case: Result in a portfolio of almost 200 vehicles that we are insuring at competitive rates, in a business that is scaling meaningfully, and is commercially viable for us.
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