As an enthusiastic user of two-wheeled transport -- both bicycles and motorcycles -- Nicolas Faquet understands what kinds of risks he has to take on the road every day.
He also knows those risks are shockingly high in Thailand, which has the world's second-highest rate of road fatalities (behind only Libya) relative to population, according to an authoritative World Health Organization survey.
Given the poor state of road safety in the country, most people would conclude that attempting to make money by insuring motorcyclists would be a losing proposition. But with disciplined risk management and digitally enhanced capabilities, the French-born CEO of Roojai.com, the country's first online-only vehicle insurance broker, is unfazed by this seemingly gargantuan task.
"The frequency of car accidents here is very surprising when compared to all the markets that I have worked in -- and it is very scary, to be honest, where it is almost one small accident per year per customer," he tells Asia Focus.
"How we are trying to approach it technologically is by rewarding customers with safer profiles. The competitive advantage we have is that we will try to go deeper to understand who you are, what risk you represent, what kind of experience you have and what you use your car for to give a better price to people we believe are safer."
Mr Faquet hopes that in the long run, Roojai's reward concept will change not only the local car insurance industry but also driver behaviour, making the roads safer for everyone. Sceptics might look at how people drive today and throw up their hands in despair. But Mr Faquet has proved his critics wrong about his beliefs before.
DRAWN TO ASIA
Mr Faquet was born in Brittany and spent all of his youth in northwestern France before moving to Singapore when he was 24 years old in 1997. He returned to Europe in 2004 for a few years, before coming back to Asia in 2009 and has been in region ever since.
"I was 24 years old when the offer to go to the other side of the world came and I said yes because I had never been to Asia at that time and I was very excited," he recalls.
"It was supposed to be a two-year assignment but I ended up staying for eight years in Singapore and I loved it."
Prior to his move to Asia, Mr Faquet completed an MBA from Essec Business School in Paris in 1996. The following year he studied actuarial science and insurance at Pierre and Marie Curie University, also known as Paris 6.
While he chose to study insurance, the industry was not one of his true passions, as his interests were more directed toward mathematics and entrepreneurship.
"I've always loved mathematics," he says. "At first and during my MBA, I had no clue what actuarial science was all about but it was a lot about mathematics, so I went and chose that before I realised it was about applied mathematics for insurance and finance."
He likens mathematics to a game in which one confronts problems and needs to find solutions, often in the face of certain constraints. This aspect is fascinating for him because the outcome is "the sense of absolute truth".
"Mathematics is about right or wrong. There is no grey area like what we can have in business and I love the purity of the reasoning process," he says.
The enthusiasm for mathematics never left him, even as he toiled away in the insurance business. Starting out as a management trainee at MMA Insurance in Paris, he moved on to management positions with AXA in the French capital and in Singapore, and finally became CEO of Axeria iard for the April Group in Lyon. Mr Faquet, it seemed, had found his comfort zone.
"I entered the insurance industry 1995 and I have never left it," he says, laughing at the realisation. "It is not any kid's dream to be in insurance but surprisingly, once you get into it, you don't think about getting out."
This is the "funny" part about the industry, he explains, as nobody ever dreams about getting into insurance, but once you are involved with the business, it is rare to see people turning away.
"It is actually a very interesting business because it is so challenging. It is one of those businesses where there is a reverse cycle, as you get the money first before you buy the product to provide the service," he says.
Insurance providers have to sell a product first before knowing how much it is going to cost them to provide it in terms of claims. But they do their best to figure that out, applying predictive analysis and a lot of mathematical models to calculate how much a certain group of people will cost to cover once their policies have been issued.
Beyond the intriguing intellectual challenges that the profession represents, Mr Faquet was also motivated to stick with insurance because it offers a sense of giving back to society, which he finds rewarding.
"This is a business where, when you learn a bit more about it, you feel good about doing it because it is something that is really helpful for people," he says admiringly. "It helps people to take risk, it helps people to get on with their lives and focus on the important things while being able to have peace of mind provided by different channels of insurance."
NEW IDEAS
Mr Faquet always had Asia in mind, even when he moved back to Paris with AXA in 2004 and then when on to head the car insurance business of AIG Europe in 2005. His goal at that time was to open some kind of direct online insurance business somewhere in the Far East, but the problem was finding an investor who believed in it. Most people in Europe were telling him that the idea is not going to work.
"Everybody, my colleagues, were all telling me, 'You can't do online insurance in Asia', or 'Asian people need to talk to somebody' … all those types of things, which I did not believe," he recalls.
The business opportunity finally came five years later when one of his Singaporean friends told him about investors who were interested in the idea and the result was DirectAsia.com, the first pure player in direct insurance in Hong Kong.
"We first launched DirectAsia in Singapore in 2010 and then we launched in Hong Kong in 2011 and that was when I went to the office in Hong Kong, and then we launched in Thailand in 2013," he says.
The company was later sold to a bigger UK-based insurer, Hiscox Ltd, in March 2014. At the time DirectAsia had 54,000 policyholders and employed 140 people across three locations, with gross premiums of US$25.3 million.
At that time, Mr Faquet was considering whether to return to the corporate world or do something else. The "entrepreneurial fire" was still burning inside, which led to a new startup venture. Within six months, Roojai.com entered the market in September 2014.
"I believed that I still had one or two more [businesses] in me so I decided to step out and start again," he says.
With good connections from his time at DirectAsia in Thailand and his knowledge of insurance needs in Southeast Asian, he concluded that the Kingdom was "clearly the most promising market" to start this new chapter of his career.
Thailand, he notes, has a big domestic market with some 50 million motor vehicles on the roads, including more than 9 million passenger cars, and is "still growing quite fast" compared with its regional peers. Even though Vietnam and the Philippines have larger populations, they have only about 2 million and 3 million passenger cars respectively.
"Most other markets are quite small and as it is a digital venture, there is a need to make sure that the customers are there with the digital culture," Mr Faquet says. "These are the people who are willing to use mobile phones to shop and Thailand, by far, is one of the most digitally inclined markets in Southeast Asia."
The depth of the market coupled with a critical mass of "digital ready" consumers who are willing to shift from offline to online means Thailand was almost a no-brainer for the digital car insurance provider.
ALL ABOUT UNDERSTANDING
"Roo jai" in Thai means understanding (roo) one's heart (jai) or in business terms, understanding your customers' desires or needs. For Mr Faquet, it was just as important for his new business to be seen as uniquely Thai.
"One thing I learned with DirectAsia is that on paper it might look smart to take on many countries in one go," he says. "On the execution side, however, you will lose a lot of opportunities because every market is different."
The fact that each market in Southeast Asia has its own rules and regulations means that a company could lose a lot of focus when investing in multiple markets all at once. That is why Roojai was set up to concentrate on the Thai market only. Mr Faquet has no plan to consider any kind of expansion before 2020, when he might start to look at developing Southeast Asia and India.
"This is a Thai venture and we will focus on Thailand to make sure that we make it here, and maybe five, six, seven or ten years later we might look somewhere else," he explains. "Being a Thai venture only means we need to have a Thai name to speak to Thai people … who, like French people, are very proud of their culture."
The "Roo Jai" concept comes with the idea of "being there when you need it", providing a higher level of service in an industry that has not always been recognised for service excellence.
"It is about, who are you going to call when you get into an accident? Who are the people that you feel the closest to? It is, of course, your family and we want to be that person beyond your family members who you would call for help," says Mr Faquet.
The Roojai name also provided an opportunity to create a memorable mascot in the form of a kangaroo. The 'roo is known, of course, for its speed and jumping ability, which helps the company promote its 30-minute response pledge for customers in Bangkok and major cities. The kangaroo is also a symbol of a family-oriented animal where mothers care for their young in a pouch.
The insurer has set out to make the services on its website and mobile application as simple to use as possible, but dynamic and flexible in terms of offerings.
Visitors can move smoothly through a series of questions, starting with whether they own a car or a motorbike. They then select the brand, model and year or manufacture, followed by personal details related to age, gender, insurance claim history and what the vehicle is primarily used for. A price quotation can be obtained within one minute.
"Insurance is a human need. It is a boring product as it's not something that you fancy to buy," says Mr Faquet. "It is a convenience product -- you want to be done quickly so you can get on with your life, so it is about making it easy, convenient and cheap."
With that idea in mind, Roojai became the first to offer online insurance in Thailand for big bikes in October. It was the first to offer monthly payment by debit and credit cards for motorcyclists as well. Customers can also carry out bike inspections in less than 10 minutes using the Roojai app with no need for an appointment, as traditional insurers require.
Mr Faquet's wish is that one day his company's reward programme will be replicated throughout the industry in Thailand and Southeast Asia, though he is realistic enough to acknowledge that tis "is not going to happen overnight". It could take 20 or 30 years, but if both private and public efforts are made now, they will eventually be fruitful in the future.
"Rewarding people with safer profiles and being less competitive for people with higher risk means that in the long run, we hope this will change the industry as the more people follow, the more people will be rewarded for driving safely, and that will improve society's driving patterns," he concludes.
