Insurance began as a concept to help people within communities share risk and to ensure individuals could recover from unfortunate events. However, over the past few hundred years insurance has become associated with long questionnaires, complex paperwork, and, more recently, frustrating call centres.

Many industries have been disrupted with innovation and the smart application of technology, leading to intuitive smartphone apps or user friendly web interfaces. Meanwhile, insurance has remained relatively untouched.

While working in Europe, brothers Andy and Rob Coon were inspired by how technology-driven startups were creating digital-first insurance companies. Upon returning to New Zealand, and joining forces with veteran financial executive Brett Wilson, they decided insurance needed a refresh and set about creating Cove.

Cove’s mission is straightforward: To make insurance simple.

This means blending together all the right technologies to take the stress out of getting your insurance sorted and making claims when things go wrong. It also means making insurance understandable by removing jargon-filled sales brochures and creating intuitive interfaces that can be explored on any device.

The team behind Cove has well over 100 years of financial services experience, and are passionate about technology, innovation, and creating the best possible customer experience for insurance.

Meet (some of) the team working to simplify insurance in New Zealand:

Andy Coon

University of Auckland graduate Andy Coon began his career in insurance at Sovereign. He also worked for a number of years in investment banking across the UK, US, and NZ before returning to insurance and working on various startups in Europe. Andy has long been a tech enthusiast and is loving applying cutting edge technology to the insurance industry.

Rob Coon

Before co-founding Cove alongside brother Andy, Rob was CFO and founder of yacht builder Evolution Yachts. Here he gained immense experience in technological transformation, scaling & the internationalisation of a startup business. More recently Rob was involved with insurtech startups in Europe, before returning to New Zealand to work on Cove.

Brett Wilson

Brett is a veteran financial executive of numerous financial services organisations, including roles as CFO of Tower Insurance, CFO of Seniors Money International, and GM Finance at both ASB Bank & Sovereign. Brett brings a wealth of financial and managerial knowledge as the company gears up to innovate insurance in New Zealand.

Peter Reid

Peter has a degree in computer science from Auckland University and has been involved with a number of startup companies and corporates. He has over 25 years of experience as an independent IT consultant specialising in data and integration architecture in a variety of industries in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The majority of that time was spent working on projects in insurance and telecommunication including projects at Telecom, National Mutual, IAG and Tower.

Over the past 6 months the team has grown in size with Peter Reid (CTO), Matt Giles (Digital Marketing), Olya Bablinyuk (QA), Toby Downton (Product Manager), Rebecca Neigert (Security), Ming Cheuk (Developer), Nic Von Ahsen (Developer), and Kyle MacKinnon (Developer) all joining the team.

^{*Our products will be underwritten by a licensed insurer}