A new proposition

How Bizzomate built an affordable incapacity insurance within 12 weeks

Over 900.000 workers in the Netherlands are self-employed. Over 80 per cent of these workers have no incapacity insurance because they are hard to get by and expensive. However, every independent worker will need such an insurance in the near future as there is legislation coming into force that will make such an insurance mandatory.

VSZ Assuradeuren, a specialist in social security insurance solutions and part of the Acture Group, wanted to solve this issue by offering these independent workers an affordable and easy solution.To enable workers to quickly take out an incapacity insurance online, VSZ started looking for a partner that could help them build an online portal. Due to previous success with pension provider AZL, VSZ Assuradeuren selected Bizzomate as a partner. In just 12 weeks Bizzomate developed a brand new solution based on the Mendix low-code platform.

The solution allows independent workers to take out an affordable, basic incapacity insurance online. Filling in lots of paperwork or using an intermediary is no longer needed. “Independent workers can quickly calculate their premium on the portal and after they have closed the insurance they have 24/7 insight into their data. This is exactly what todays’ workers want. An insurance that can quickly be taken out online and gives you easy access to your data”, says Roy Hageman, product owner at VSZ Tulpenfonds.

Independent workers are very satisfied with the new basic insurance. Once they have decided to enlist, the online registration process is easy. The portal verifies if the applicant is on the EU blacklist, verifies their medical data, calculates the tariff and checks with the Chamber of Commerce if there is a company registered in the applicant’s name. These data are automatically processed and the applicants get informed via email whether they are accepted or not. Once accepted they have access to a personal overview of their data and they can take care of simple tasks themselves like calling in sick or making minor administrative changes without the intervention of a VSZ employee. They can pay automatically for the insurance via direct debit. This service is carried out by Mangopay.

Focus on building it right

The portal was the first application VSZ built with low-code. Since a completely new solution was developed, Bizzomate and VSZ Tulpenfonds first determined what needed to be built during various design thinking sessions. “At Bizzomate they highly value the importance of building the right solution for their customers. For them it’s about more than just building an app. Because Bizzomate was asking us exactly the right questions with their design thinking sessions, we got a very clear idea of what functionality the portal had to offer. Once the goal was clearly defined, the project took off at lightning speed. The portal was built and live within twelve weeks”, says Hageman

With the portal VSZ offers independent workers the opportunity to create a basic safety net in case of incapacity when they start their business for instance. They can always increase the insured amount in a later stage. Because VSZ Tulpenfonds is part of the Acture Groep, they can also offer the guidance needed when workers actually become incapacitated for work, like advice about medical assistance and trainings to return to work.

Getting to the heart of the matter first

VSZ Tulpenfonds and Bizzomate have been working together for over three years now. They started out with ‘Tulpenfonds’ as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a very basic incapacity insurance, which was developed to test if the idea was viable and would get the attention of independent workers. However, over the years the functionality of the insurance was extended and Bizzomate also built various other applications for VSZ. Hageman: “We have really grown accustomed to the agile scrum work methodology of Bizzomate over the years. From defining the right solution to build, to testing and production; the collaboration is always running smoothly. No matter if we work online or on location. The main advantage is that they always get to the heart of the matter with us first, allowing us to build the best solutions for our customers. Besides that, they always have our back when it comes to new projects. They are very flexible in supporting us when we come up with ideas for new solutions we want to create.”

Esther Dusseldorp, Algemeen Directeur at Tulpenfonds: “Bizzomate really supported us in our dream to create this insurance. This has proven to be of great business value for us. With their speed and reliability they’ve really helped us to turn this business opportunity into working applications. We are really satisfied with the solution and our collaboration with Bizzomate.”

Plans for 2022

Together with Bizzomate the functionality of the insurance will be extended further in 2022. Hageman: “We are definitely reaping the benefits of our choice to work with Bizzomate and the Mendix low-code platform now. It has enabled us to keep on adding functionality to the portal very quickly and with unprecedented flexibility. It is obvious that this resulted in major cost savings. We are currently working on adding even more interesting new features allowing us to offer independent workers even better opportunities to take out an incapacity insurance exactly tailored to their needs.”