Cover Genius, an Australian insurtech for embedded insurance, has swooped for Booking Protect to enter the ticketing and live entertainment market.
Booking Protect is a global refund protection specialist for ticket sellers, platforms, and live event companies such as SeatGeek, Spectrix, AudienceView, and Night Out in the US, Zaiko in Japan, See Tickets, Festicket and TicketSource in the UK, and OzTix in Australia.
The acquisition will see Cover Genius provide ticketing platforms, small to mid-sized ticket sellers, events and venues, and Booking Protect's over 350 partners with embedded ticket protection globally through XCover, the insurtech's award-winning end-to-end global distribution platform.
Booking Protect's team will move into Cover Genius to maximise growth within a sector experiencing explosive growth, with sales growing by 74% year-on-year (YOY) to more than 2 million policy sales in 2022.
XCover is available at Amazon and other retailers, ticketing giants like ASX, and other global brands such as Booking Holdings, Intuit, and Hopper. It enables digital companies to embed offers for any line of insurance or warranty in any country directly into their checkout or app – from a single API call.
Commenting on the acquisition and XCover's involvement, Cover Genius co-founder and CEO Angus McDonald said the company has seen significant growth in attach rates and customer satisfaction metrics for ticketing partners.
“We're excited to apply those learnings and utilize our platform approach in order to supercharge the exceptional foundational work from the talented Booking Protect team,” McDonald said. “It's a natural fit for us to team up with established leaders in specialty fields like ticketing who have built a great service and end-to-end solution at the expense of traditional insurers whose legacy systems contribute to poor customer outcomes and stunted growth for partners.
“While Cover Genius remains focused on enterprise partners like AXS, we recognize that there's a huge addressable market out there, so acquisitions like this set us to be able to go deep within highly attractive verticals like ticketing.”
Booking Protect CEO Simon Mabb commented: “With the pandemic exposing the need for comprehensive coverage, we believe that now is the time to join forces with Cover Genius to scale our technologies and expand the reach of our mission. We look forward to continuing to serve our partners and help businesses provide a seamless customer experience in their time of need.”
