Meeri Savolainen: Inzmo... Driving home rental resilience

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Meeri Savolainen, CEO and co-founder of Inzmo, a fast-growing European financial services provider, making renting a home affordable for everyone.  Inzmo is considered to be the fourth runner in creating a new standard for how people rent their homes. With more than 70,000 customers and over 400% growth in 2022, Inzmo has acquired recognition and investments from several insurers in Europe As an entrepreneur by trade, Meeri is passionate about breaking new ground to lead social change. She shares that the core innovation lies in understanding customer needs, struggles, and their values. "At Inzmo, we design our services around this purpose - this is what makes us authentic. We put the customer first.”  During their discussion, they cover what makes Inzmo a leader in its category across European’s rental and cash deposit market, Meeri’s interest in communication, relationships psychology, and strategic intervention, Inzmo’s innovation journey across Europe… Opportunities and challenges, and Team Inzmo: What is next to scale? KEY TAKEAWAYS I was a corporate and tax lawyer for quite a few years at Ernst & Young, and I started thinking that I wanted to grow more, take more risks and become an entrepreneur. When I began Inzmo with my co-founder, we wanted to create a digital disruption in the insurance industry because it was lagging behind on the technology side. As things proceeded and developed, we wanted to create a strong brand in the insurance sector. We wanted to mediate our own products. We didn’t just want to be an IT company or an enabler for insurance companies. Since 2016 we’ve become more consumer-faced. We’re creating innovation in the insurance industry by automating processes in underwriting and, first and foremost, the whole customer experience. We believe success in the future for insurance companies and InsurTechs relies on customer success and experiences. We understand that the majority of our customers are also vendors, and 80% of those customers are living paycheque to paycheque. This means that they have a financial burden daily, and 40% of their income goes to pay for rent, utilities, etc. These are the people we want to help with our different financial and digital solutions. Insurance is a very male-dominated industry, though it is getting better. I’m proud to say that at Inzmo, 50% of the employees are women, and 60% of the c-level/ management staff are female. Being a woman gives us much more opportunities to stand out. It’s also good for PR – especially for a small company like Inzmo, which doesn’t have a limitless budget – to get visibility. It does, of course, have its downsides as well. Women struggle more to get VC funding because they need to prove their success more than men. After all, there’s still a strong bias, even though the data proves otherwise. BEST MOMENTS ‘We’re always trying to find our niche. We don’t want to be another traditional insurance company or fight with the bigger companies.’‘Renting rather than home ownership is a growing trend globally because people want a flexible lifestyle. We want to be an enabler in this new lifestyle.’‘Inzmo means “insurance” and “mobile,” insurance that is always accessible – it’s instant, it’s always there, and very easy to follow.’‘We’ve been focussed on the German market so that we could prove we’d done well in one very significant market, but in the next 12-24 months we’re ready to expand to other European rental markets, the most interesting to us are Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Meeri, also called Mrs InsurTech, is strongly driven by innovation, meaning the development of new products, services, and processes within a forward-thinking world.  She specialized in developing innovative, creative and visionary products and services for the insurance sector. A serial entrepreneur with a passion for breaking new ground to lead social change, with management experience and the ability to lead and build high-performing teams. She is interested in communication and relationships psychology - currently focussing also on developing her knowledge in Strategic Intervention (also known as SI). SI is dedicated to extracting the most practical and effective forms of strategic action and communication from various disciplines: Ericksonian therapy, Human Needs Psychology, organizational psychology, neurolinguistics, psychology of influence, strategic studies, traditions of diplomacy and negotiation, and others. A practical method for acting strategically to get things done is also that human needs are fulfilled and elevated. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meeri-savolainen-b5a85b25/  About Inzmo Inzmo is a fast-growing financial services provider in Europe, making renting a home affordable for everyone. The team’s aim is to become #1 provider of zero-deposit solutions for EU renters. We believe the core innovation lies in understanding customer needs, struggles, and their values. Inzmo designs services around this purpose - this is what makes the team truly authentic. Inzmo puts the customer first. Always. The team thinks big, takes risks, innovates constantly, hires the best, and strives to earn customers' trust. Inzmo is the fourth runner in creating a new standard for how people rent their homes. With over 70,000 customers and over 400% growth in 2022, Inzmo has acquired recognition and investments from several insurers in Europe. In 2017, the company was recognized as the best fin-tech company in the StartUp Europe Awards by the European Commission, and in 2019 awarded as the Insurance Shaper of the Year. Inzmo's customers are renters, primarily for mid-term and long-term rental homes. Today, finding a home online might be easy, but the road to moving in is time-consuming as the 600 billion EUR annual private rental market in the EU is still operating offline. To finalize a rental agreement, one must provide proof of income, a cash deposit (3 months rent), home contents, and liability insurance. This takes 1-2 weeks and thousands of euros for cash deposit. Inzmo is solving all these four pain points with one insurance product that you can get in seconds online for a small monthly premium. As Inzmo focuses on covering each customer when he or she signs up for a rental home, the team sees this as an opportunity to serve the customer for the whole rental cycle with different insurance products and services. More on Inzmo on their site and LinkedIn profile. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdL LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden Instagram: sabinevdLofficial Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial TikTok: sabinevdlofficial Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com Website: www.sabinevdl.com