KUALA LUMPUR, 16 December 2021 — Regional insurtech firm Igloo today announced a new partnership with digital payments service provider, Pine Labs, marking the extension of its regional footprint in Malaysia. Pine Labs is currently used by over 246,000 merchants in 3700 cities and towns across India and Malaysia. The partnership comes on the heels of its appointment of Amitabh Singh as Country Manager, Malaysia.
Through the partnership, Pine Labs will offer shoppers hassle-free and easy mobile phone protection solutions under the IglooCare Program. Mobile Phone 360 and Phone Screen Protection are currently available on Pine Labs’ platform. The protection covers both repair and replacement of the gadget by up to 100% of the gadget retail price, offered through Igloo’s dedicated nationwide IglooCare repair and service network in Malaysia.
Meanwhile, as part of Igloo’s plan to extend its presence in Malaysia, the company appointed Amitabh Singh, as Country Manager for Igloo, Malaysia. He will be responsible for Igloo’s overall country operations across business development, partnerships, marketing and operations. With nearly two decades of experience in financial services, he has held several leadership roles across Southeast Asia.
In addition, Igloo is expanding its team in Malaysia and making key hires across Business Development, Operations, Customer service & Sales management.
According to Amitabh, the partnership marks a significant milestone in Igloo’s expansion in Malaysia. “We are happy to partner with Pine Labs to offer our best-in-class IglooCare phone protection solutions. Igloo aims to work with more local partners to provide protection platform solutions that are easy to purchase, affordable, and directly impact consumers’ daily lives. These lifestyle-focused solutions allow consumers to experience minimal disruption and financial loss to their daily lives – across multiple categories including Electronics & Durables, Health Benefits products, Lifestyle coverage and SME solutions – all of which are enabled through our technology platform,” he added.
“Pine Labs has been at the forefront of technology in the payments solutions space across India and Southeast Asia. In Malaysia we are expanding our footprint rapidly by entering into strategic alliances with leading banks and retail brands. We are very happy to be partnering with technology platform like Igloo to enable us to expand protection offerings to our merchants. At Pine Labs, we are always striving to get the best products and services for our merchant partners and we find Igloo provides us the best platform in terms of options and roll out flexibility,” said Chayan Hazra, Head of Payment Business – APAC for Pine Labs.
This year, Igloo has established over 30 key partnerships in diverse industries to make protection products more accessible across the region. In July, the insurtech company partnered with regional leading food delivery platform foodpanda Singapore to launch protection solutions for gig economy workers. In September, Igloo successfully launched partnerships with leading e-Wallet platforms in the Philippines GCash and DANA in Indonesia to provide online shopping protection (PH) and phone screen protection (ID) respectively. Last month, Igloo partnered its first Digital Health brand, HD, to provide health-related micro-insurance products via the HDmall healthcare marketplace platform in Thailand. The company also boasts several award wins this year, namely “Most Innovative InsurTech Company”, “2021 Inclusive Fintech 50” and “Insurtech Initiative of the Year – Singapore”.
Amitabh Singh’s profile can be found here.
About Igloo
Igloo, previously known as “Axinan”, is the first full-stack insurtech firm to emerge from Singapore. It has offices in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and tech centres are located in China. With a mission of making insurance accessible for all, the firm leverages big data, real-time risk assessment, and end-to-end automated claims management to create B2B2C insurance solutions for platform companies and insurance companies. Igloo’s insurance solutions enable companies to eliminate their exposure to operational risk, create new revenue streams, and optimize and enhance existing products and services. In April 2020, Igloo successfully closed its Series A+ funding round worth US$8.2 million, bringing its total funding to US$16 million from global investors.
Igloo is led by a core team that comprises top talent from the technology and insurance industries hailing from global corporations including Facebook, Grab, Flipkart, Garena, Manulife, Shopee, Yahoo! and Zalora. For more information, please visit https://iglooinsure.com
About Pine Labs
A leading merchant commerce platform, Pine Labs serves prominent large, mid-sized and small merchants across India and Southeast Asia. The company’s unique cloud-based platform enables it to offer a wide range of payment acceptance and merchant commerce solutions including enterprise automation systems such as inventory management and customer relationship management. Its stored value platform includes issuing, processing, and distributing digital gift cards for corporate customers around the world. In April 2021, Pine Labs acquired Fave, a consumer fintech platform that provides a smart payment app to the smart generation of consumers looking to pay and save. Fave is currently operational in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia and is also available in India. Incorporated in Singapore, Pine Labs’ key investors include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard. To know more, please visit www.pinelabs.my