Contxto – The fit young things—or struggling founders—reading this site might not even have health insurance, but I think it is rather well-known that getting your hands on it can be a pain in the neck at the best of times.
Therefore, the recent announcement by one of the founders of QuePlan.cl—a Chilean healthtech insurance marketplace—may come as unsurprisingly pleasant news to many.
Matías Stäger—the aforementioned Co-founder—announced on his LinkedIn page that:
“QuePlan.cl is set to expand internationally in 2020! We are soon to start-up operations in Peru and Colombia with a unique platform in Latam that allows us to find the best health coverage.”
Related article: Bitmec premieres digital health system in Chile
It’s a long way to the top if you wanna go enroll
Chile has a notoriously unfriendly healthcare system.
Decades of liberalization starting in the last quarter of the twentieth-century were inevitably going to affect this lucrative sector. Then the awkward incorporation of government surveillance, in the form of the Health Superintendence of Chile, has made for strange bedfellows.
Fast forward to 2020 and a convoluted ecosystem of State-sanctioned, private insurers locally known as Ispares—preventative healthcare institutions—, that offer customers lots of insurance options. Like… a lot.
That’s where QuePlan.cl came to the fore. The idea was to pair up access for consumers to the right healthcare plans with the right providers.
The road was not easy at first, of course. The authorities in charge, ever the living metaphor of the unhelpfulness of the system, giggled at these founders’ ambition. They claimed that every few months a budding entrepreneur would walk into their offices with similar pipe dreams about rationalizing the Chilean healthcare apparatus.
This plucky young startup had what it took, though. Namely, it had the right know-how of the local ecosystem and the tech to back it up.
QuePlan works thanks to a smart product comparison software that calculates prices, scores, combinations, and coverages based on a user’s profile. This kit was what allowed the startup to become the first digital insurance broker in the country.
According to Chile’s La Tercera, the startup made US$1.1 million last year. They also have about US$85 million-worth of investment war-chest, raised from various friendly angels, venture capitalists (VCs), and, of course, the ever-present Corfo—Chile’s governmental innovation and tech agency.
This seems like more than enough to expand into neighboring Peru and Colombia. QuePlan will certainly need it, since, as Ryan Kerr—the startup’s other Co-founder—says, the makeup of each country’s healthcare market is completely different.
This means every new step will be a whole new adventure, but that’s certainly not putting Stäger off. He concluded his announcement with:
“Soon, we will be informing you of developments for 2020’s upcoming new countries, technologies, and services!”
Related articles: Tech and startups in Chile!
-AG
