The former investment banker turned founder of insurance provider OneDegree is shaking up the pet insurance industry with much needed modernisation
In the What Matters To Me series, a Generation T honouree describes what they do, why they do it, and why it matters.
It was a family bereavement that made Alvin Kwock reassess his path in life. After his mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Kwock took a sabbatical to care for her and was surprised by how labyrinthine and ineffective the insurance claims process could be. “I realised the entire insurance and medical industry was outdated. The use of technology, the waiting times and the claim experience were all broken. That’s what inspired me to look into the insurance space,” he says.
Instead of human medical care, Kwock ended up launching pet insurance provider OneDegree, which prides itself on its quick and simple claims process. Here, he explains how his company is changing the way the industry operates.
My mum was Buddhist and after she passed away, I went to the Buddhist temple for about a month and a half. There, I saw people performing rituals for their dogs and cats, and it inspired me because in Buddhism, pets are considered part of the family. It made me think, ‘You treat your pet like a kid for everything, but when it comes to insurance, there’s no product that matches that,’ which is one of the reasons I decided to focus on pet insurance. There are more than half a million pets in Hong Kong: almost the same as the number of primary school students. There is a really large, underserved market.
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