Getsafe - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I’ve been working as a software engineer for more than ten years now. I joined Getsafe as Vice President of Engineering nine months ago.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

The app had already been shipped long before I joined Getsafe. The biggest challenge right now is to find enough experienced frontend and backend developers. We have a lot of exciting product ideas and technical infrastructure improvements that can help move Getsafe forward, but to do everything we want, while making sure all our systems keep working well for our customers we need to add a lot more engineers to the team.

_{Anthony Mayer - VP Engineering at Getsafe Digital}

The interviewee, Anthony Mayer, is the VP of Engineering at Getsafe focused on creating a great, modern insurance experience. Having grown up between the US and Germany and after having worked for US-based tech companies like NextRoll and Yelp, he's excited to be diving deep into the German and broader European tech scene.

When he's not working on being the best engineering leader he can be and helping his team to grow, Anthony spends his time obsessing over his 2 dogs, 1 cat, and a rotating cast of foster cats.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

Outside of the Getsafe app of course, a few apps immediately come to mind:
Feedly, which is a great RSS Reader. I'm a total news junkie, especially tech news but also just world news and Feedly does a great job letting me organize my news sources and letting me focus on a topic when I want to.
Slack, which I use both for work and actually with friends as well. Slack can sometimes be a lot to handle, but it's my preferred work communication medium. I feel like they're constantly iterating in small and big ways to make the experience as great as possible and never saying “good enough”. That's something I strive for with the Getsafe app as well.

How long have you been working on this app?

Getsafe started as Germany's first digital insurance manager on the market back in 2015. That was way before my time with the company. In 2017, Getsafe became an insurance provider, so since then, customers have been able to buy and manage their Getsafe insurance in real-time and paperlessly via an app. But Getsafe continuously invests in developing and improving its mobile app, and of course also in expanding the portfolio. Getsafe already offers personal liability, contents, legal, and car insurance in Germany and contents insurance with five extensions in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Since April, German customers can follow the status of their claim in the app – just like you would expect from a logistics company. Additionally, all important insurance documents are issued and saved in the app. And we have many, many other ideas.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

Christian and Marius founded Getsafe out of a need to make insurance easier for the next generation of insurance buyers. In the next ten years, the generation known as millennials will purchase about one billion insurance policies in Europe alone. We see a lot of potential here. Young customers, in particular, are skeptical about insurance. These digital natives have no interest in complicated paperwork or long conversations with brokers and agents. Technology enables us to offer them a new, simple, and transparent insurance experience on their smartphones – one that is easy and fun.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

Being insured with Getsafe means not needing even a single sheet of paper throughout the whole insurance process. Not only are we digital, but we put our app first. This sets us apart because many insurance providers that allow you to purchase policies online still send you paperwork by post or have an extra customer portal to log into. Not us. So we fulfill the needs of digitally-minded target groups like hardly any other insurer in Europe.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We have a new release every few weeks, so we’re constantly iterating the app to make it better for users. One subtle, but very exciting feature we just started releasing is an improvement in our claim filing bot where we remind customers about some of the details of their policy so they can better understand if their claim is likely to be covered or not already ahead of time. It's already frustrating if something is damaged and it is so much more frustrating if you think your claim will be covered, only to find out it’s not. So this is one of the ways in which we’re demystifying some of the complexities of insurance.

We're also working on a really large update that I can't go into the details of yet since it's still a few months out, but I'm very excited about how much it's going to improve the app experience. We're putting in a ton of work right now to make sure it comes out great for the user.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Naturally, become a customer of Getsafe and convince yourself that insurance can be flexible and transparent for a great price. And once you are a customer, give us feedback so that we can improve the app further.