Member Article

Landbay is to start offering insurance following Legal & General tie-up

Landbay, the London-based peer-to-peer (P2P) mortgage lender, has entered into a new partnership with financial services firm Legal & General as it gears up to launch its own insurance product.

The lender has said it will deliver its insurance service, which is targeted at buy to let landlords, via insurtech business KASKO, where it will offer real-time quoting and underwriting of building, contents, tenant and rent guarantee insurance.

Integrated within Landbay’s online application portal, the new service will provide brokers and customers with the option of purchasing insurance at the ‘point-of-demand’ as part of the same process as obtaining a mortgage on the platform.

Gray Stern, Co-founder and CCO at Landbay, said the new service, which is part of the FinTech firm’s efforts to expand its non-lending product line, would help to promote the company’s specialist expertise in the buy-to-let market.

He said: “The tie up with Legal & General follows our recent agreement with a ‘Big 4’ firm to support Landbay Accounting and Tax Services. These new value-add services have been developed to enhance our specialist buy to let mortgage offering and help position us as an expert within UK buy to let.”

Paul Brett, who is Managing Director Intermediaries at Landbay, believes the new partnership will provide intermediary partners with more ways to ‘add value’ and generate additional revenue from each opportunity financed on its platform.

It also poses a way for the lender, which is backed by ZPG and has over 500 crowd investors following a string of raises on Seedrs, to integrate the latest InsurTech innovations through KASKO’s technology without having to develop the provision in-house. Brett claims that the process itself will be quick, seamless and paperless.

For London-based KASKO, the partnership marks perhaps the most high-profile agreement yet since it was founded back in 2015 and a seal of approval for its underlying platform.

Nick Suehr, who is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at the InsurTech startup, said that the firm was hoping to modernise the insurance industry while offering a ‘middle layer’ between insurers and the digital world.

He added: “We are excited about working with Landbay and Legal & General to offer insurance at the point of demand. It shows the speed and flexibility of our platform and how the insurance world can be made simpler and better through technology.”