Note: this podcast episode is in German, but the article below is in english.

500 Million Contracts, Increasingly Less Care, and a $Billion Opportunity

The German insurance industry holds roughly 500 million active insurance policy contracts. On paper, a goldmine. In reality, a ticking liability. Two-thirds of insurance brokers and agents are over 50; 10% are past retirement. A decade ago, one broker or agent managed 1,700 contracts. Today, it’s 2,700. No human can provide proper customer consultation and service at that scale.

Most policyholders have a touchpoint with their insurer once a year: at invoice time. Insurers are legally obliged to provide ongoing service (Insurance Contract Act), but the gap between regulation and reality is massive. This is not a customer-experience issue—it’s a structural crisis that costs the industry billions in latent value.

LOYAGO’s Mission

Dr. Marco Adelt and Daniel Glaremin founded LOYAGO to unlock that latent value. Adelt, Co-Founder of CLARK, one of the few global InsurTech unicorns, has built digital insurance solutions at scale in the past decade. Glaremin started working in the insurance sector at the age of 12 and has decades of customer-facing experience, and most recently was VP Operations & Customer Service at CLARK. Adelt and Glaremin both share a lifelong passion for insurance customers and believe the role and responsibilities of an insurance broker/agent are critical to a well-functioning insurance industry. They both saw insurers obsess over acquiring new customers at rising costs, while existing policyholders received almost no attention.

LOYAGO bets on the contracts insurers already own. Idle policies can become active assets through targeted engagement, tailored content, and frictionless service. This is where growth, loyalty, and trust intersect to turn into a high-value compounding growth flywheel.

Commoditization and Misaligned Incentives

The German insurance sector has unfortunately become a purely price-driven commoditized industry. Price comparison portals have conditioned policyholders to view policies as interchangeable. Insurers followed suit, cutting prices until differentiation disappeared. The result: thinner margins, broker/agent burnout, and eroded trust. Not to mention a poor customer experience and service.

As Dr. Uwe Stuhldreier points out, before chasing the latest AI fad, insurers should master the basics: ensure they have the email and contact details of all their customers! This sounds surreal, but in aggregate, the insurance sector in Germany has email addresses for only 15% of customers. If you live in Germany, you're used to getting postal communication in paper form from your insurers. Most of the industry is chasing shiny trends while ignoring fundamentals.

The LOYAGO Approach

LOYAGO focuses on three levers that deliver measurable ROI:

Relevance – Engagement only matters if content is personalized and relevant. By using portfolio and behavioral data, LOYAGO triggers outreach that solves problems. Engagement rates are multiple times higher than average campaigns.

Ease of Use – Complex processes cost time, money, and trust. LOYAGO simplifies interactions, making insurance feel modern, transparent, and reliable.

Knowledge – Policyholders want actionable context, not generic messaging. Tailored communication builds trust, turning passive contracts into active relationships and trusted brands.

Executive Imperative

Legacy insurers are trapped in a high-cost cycle: rising customer acquisition costs, underserved portfolios, and shrinking margins. LOYAGO shows a different path. Growth comes from activation and relevance, not discounts or mass marketing.

Look at other industries: Amazon cut $500 million in launch advertising to fund the early customers ordering on Prime, generating viral adoption. Octopus Energy is differentiated by transparency and profit-sharing in a commodity market. LOYAGO applies the same principle: serve your existing customer base better, and growth follows naturally.

The ROI of service over acquisition is massive. A modest improvement in customer consultation and service across just 10% of the 500 million contracts could unlock billions in lifetime value while reducing churn and reputational risk. That’s the scale of opportunity insurers ignore.

Unlocking Billions, Building Trust

Marco Adelt puts it bluntly: “Concentrate on the fundamentals—data, simplification, and delighted customers. Get that right, and value creation will take care of itself.”

LOYAGO isn’t chasing buzzwords. It addresses the structural problem: millions of contracts, millions of policyholders, and almost no customer consultation and service. For boards and executives, the question is simple: continue wasting billions on acquisitions, or unlock the latent value in the contracts you already hold. The choice is clear. What would you do?

Watch the full episode with Dr. Marco Adelt and Daniel Glaremin:

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