A Digital Companion in Life… and Thereafter: Our Investment in Afilio

It’s time to start talking about end of life planning

Dealing with the death of a parent or spouse, or taking care of a loved one who needs full-time care are certainly some of the most difficult times of our lives. Handling exhausting logistics and paperwork while consulting notaries, district courts, undertakers, and many others only makes the pain worse.

These problems affect everyone. Every single one of us already has or will one day have to deal with the intensive care and death of a family member. In Germany, over 4 million people are in full-time care and about 1 million people die every year.

Being prepared for these moments can lessen the administrative burden, but the current system is bureaucratic and opaque. It’s hard to know what information you’d need if something were to happen and can be even harder to actually find it. (That, and it’s not exactly light dinner conversation).

Most people are not prepared

While health insurance can cover home adjustments and care assistance, you need to find and file paperwork for financial reimbursement. You need to jump through further hoops to designate power of attorney or create a trustee for a living will. And for life insurance, you are flooded with options that are more geared towards broker commission than ensuring optimal coverage. 

It’s no surprise then that many people never get the crucial coverage they need to protect themselves and their families. Only 4.4% of Europeans had life insurance coverage in 2018. It’s time we start talking about retirement planning! 

But what should we be talking about and who should we be talking to? Getting insured, creating legal documents, and planning for a funeral are completely separate processes. Tech-optimized life insurance products and tech-enabled wills and estate planning can help us navigate death planning and bereavement with a digital interface. But who is there to provide holistic advice, crucial education, and personalized coverage?

Afilio has recognized something unique about this problem

Planning for difficult life events is inherently a family problem and requires intergenerational solutions. Most big decisions are made in consultation with a family member—whether that’s talking to a parent about choosing healthcare coverage after securing your first job or speaking with a spouse or child to decide on a funeral plan as part of your will. 

Afilio is your digital companion for every stage of life and the single point of contact for everything you need to protect yourself and the people you love. Afilio offers a combination of complementary products and services for families, retirement planning, and end-of-life planning. The easy onboarding of other family members creates huge virality and customer onboarding at low CACs - thereby hacking the very high CACs that most digital challengers in retirement, life insurance and insurance in general are facing.

They create a personalized experience and set of product recommendations for each individual circumstance and throughout every life stage: from early adulthood and entry into the job market, to family planning, retirement, and estate planning. On top of all this, Afilio can identify gaps in coverage and ensure you are prepared for life’s toughest moments (so you can stop worrying about paperwork and start living your life). 

Afilio’s vision goes beyond removing expensive lawyers and shady brokers from these cumbersome processes. They intend to be the guardians of your (digital) legacy,  and this while the greatest wealth transfer in modern history has just begun: $70 trillion of wealth is projected to change hands over the next 20 years—in the US only.

And it’s not just us at Speedinvest who can see the value of the product. As of today, over 2 million people in Germany are signed up to the Afilio platform—it’s clear that they’re solving a massive pain point (and they are just getting started)! 

So what got us so excited

We first met with Afilio over a year ago in early 2020 when Europe was in the first months of COVID-19 lock down. The pandemic had made us all more aware of our mortality and the issue of planning for the worst felt particularly prescient and top-of mind. However this wasn’t what excited us (are you surprised?), it was the founders: Till, Philip, and Richard. 

Till and Philip met in University at WHU. During their studies, they both were managing the complex and heartbreaking process of organizing care for an aging family member. They bonded over how difficult this was and were determined to make this easier for other families. 

Not only are they a deeply passionate team, but they are incredible executors. They meticulously collect data to understand how users are engaging with their platform and to understand what resonates best with their audience. If they disagree, they let the data decide. If they need to test their intuition they turn to the dashboards.

By identifying this as an intergenerational concern, they’ve created a really user-friendly (and sticky!) product as well as a clear method to onboarding new users as they provide a single platform for families to have the information they need at their fingertips. 

Accelerating Afilio’s funding trajectory

At Speedinvest, we are excited to invest in Afilio’s Series A alongside our friends from CommerzVentures and existing backers Cherry and Cavalry Ventures. We are looking very much forward to be part of this journey supporting Till, Philip, Richard and the entire Afilio team as they make life (and death) just a bit more manageable for all of us 🚀

Learn more about the Speedinvest Fintech team and sign up for our newsletters to get our exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.