How Alan Built an €840 Million Health Insurance Business From Scratch

Intro Every person we were talking with at the beginning of a land told us you should not be an insurance company, you should be a broker, you should be a technology provider. Speaker 2 That has one of the lowest sort of customer satisfaction scores. People pay for it. Most people resent it, and then they only think about it when something goes wrong. And if something goes wrong, then they sometimes even hate the experience. Right? That's the market you chose to enter. What were you thinking? Speaker 1 You had tried but not that many. If you look at Canada, where we launched last year, we were the first new license in 1957 in health insurance. I think you need need to speak to things. How do you use personalisation to help people, but not personalisation to tailor the risk too much? Speaker 2 I get it, but isn't this the polar opposite of how this sector has evolved over the the decades? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the latest episode of Cultionomics with Arjun. We're speeding our way to the end of season 4 and for this episode I have somebody beaming in from Brussels in Belgium, but he seems to spend his time between Brussels, Paris and France, Spain and Canada. He goes by the name of Jean Charles. He is the Co founder and CEO of Alan. We'll get to Alan in a minute. They play this very interesting. They call themselves Bay Riders, but I think I'll let Jean Charles explain what that is with that rather lengthy introduction. Jean Charles, welcome. I'll usually say to the couch, but since you're not on the couch and you're on a chair, welcome to the show. Speaker 1 Thank you, Arjun. Speaker 2 Excellent. So Jean Charles, I think what would be great is is before we sort of kick off, it would be worth us just getting, you know, a 32nd overview on on Alan. You know what is Alan? What is Alan and “prevention insurance”? And then is based on the vision of the world where we believe that health can't wait and every time we wait for the symptom to be checked, for some anxiety to be worked on for the check up that we should do at the right time and we don't, it leads to wealth outcome like the program doesn't disappear. It's more expensive for us as an individual like having a concerned like not too late is far more expensive in terms of life expectancies than it should. It's very expensive for society to have a very reactive model versus a preventative one. It's expensive for companies like for having their employees going in sick leave, being interest, absenteeism, mental health crisis that we all know. And so that's what we want to stop. We want to end the weight in healthcare with that. And the way we decided to do that was to build the best more integrated prevention insurance. And we call that prevention insurance because we thought think that prevention should be at the centre, but that insurance is the best business model to do that at scale and globally. And so we built a full stack insurance company from zero. So we are the insurance carrier, we carry the risk, but we rebuilt everything, the distribution layer, the underwriting layer, the claim management layer, the prevention services, a very engaging experience, the telemedicine, the digital programs and I can double click on all those things, but bundle in one seamless experience for our member. We started 10 years ago, we now cover 1.2 million people. We are 800 and thirty €40 million of annual recurring revenue growing 55% year on year. We operate in four countries, France, Spain, Belgium and Canada. We started with France and then we expanded with a very unique global platform which is quite of a unique asset in healthcare and in health insurance. I think the same technology across country, the same app across countries and we and we keep expanding the depths of our healthcare offering, prevention offering and insurance offering over time. We are roughly 900 people and still at the very, very beginning of the journey. Speaker 2 Excellent. When can I cut the cheque? Speaker 1 We just got the wrong so all. Speaker 2 Right, all right. No, I think you, you, you framed this very well for me. So you've, you've given me enough as you can double clicks along the way, but I'm going to take a step back, right? And, and, and so I've spent a little bit of my time in insurance for all my sins, right? And as we were talking, you know, this is what sort of comes to mind when I think about health insurance, right? It has one of the lowest sort of customer satisfaction scores, right? People pay for it. Most people resent it, right? And then they only think about it when something goes wrong. And if something goes wrong, then they sometimes even hate the experience, right? That's the market you chose to enter, right? What were you thinking? Why build in a market customers traditionally dislike? I think it's an incredible market. It's highly regulated, poor user experience, really bad Net Promoter score on average, and then at the same time universal need. And people are really looking to not be sick, really looking to be healthy, really looking to enjoy life. And so we saw that combination of like a very tough diagram with very complex regulation, very complex technological infrastructure, very poor user experience as an opportunity to do something very unique and to really try to reshape the relationship people have with their prevention insurance. And if you look at the number, we have one member out of three that is a weekly active user in our app, one out of 10 that is a daily active user. It's not because they have claim every single day. It's because they are engaged in doing more steps with us, 20 to 30,000 more steps every single month, acting on their mental health, solving their back pain problem, creating their nutrition plan with our AI assistant and AI coach that is helping them on a daily basis, just being the best version of themselves. And so we really try to reshuffle that experience to make it delightful by rebuilding everything from scratch. You can also reimagine a few things. If you look at our claim management processes, we have roughly 70% of claim reimburse within 5 minutes, bank money and your income. But we were able to do that only because we rebuilt everything. We rebuilt like the fraud engine, the claim management engine, the connection to the healthcare system. And it's very hard for the incumbents to do that because mostly they are usually a patch of different technologies or they don't even control the full value chain. They are intermediated in terms of distribution. Sometimes they have sub party administrator handling the claim for them and they are just a balance sheet and as by integrating the insurance vertically with the services, with the prevention services, with the gamification engine and with the telemedicine, you create like a very different experience on a new category. We consider we are 10 in a category of one in fact with Ln and with our prevention insurance. Speaker 2 No, very interesting, very interesting. I was reading somewhere that you were sort of the first sort of independent insurer and finance in, in France in about 30 years, right? Getting a license, you know, is famously difficult. How did he kind of go about it like so, you know, I'm sure others have tried, right? Or has nobody ever? Why Alan became an insurer instead of a broker Few had tried, but not that many. If you look at Canada where we launched last year, we were the first new license in 1957 in health insurance. And I think there was a combination of insurance is seen as a bad business. Health insurance at least low margin, complex, usually a lot of existing players already plus a regulation is quite tough. You need to have to build a balance sheet and then you need to differentiate and most companies make a lot of trade off. Like every person we were talking with at the beginning of the land told us you should not be an insurance company, you should be a broker, you should be a technology provider. And then when you start building it anyway, they told you you should not on your distribution. You should go through channel partners or, or brokers and and so on. And so I think we, it makes it very few people taking The North Face and trying to control the full value chain. But if you don't control the full value chain, you have really worse experience and worse economics, and you cannot win and become a global #1. And so for the regulatory part, I think most entrepreneurs tend to see regulation as a bad thing that you should try to be as far as way as possible. And we took the opposite view, which was how can we include that in our DNA and make regulation part of who we are and how we operate. And so we decided to not subcontract the regulatory feeling to lawyers. We decided to do it ourselves 100%. I become an actuary to be able to be the CEO of an insurance company and we hire former people from the regulator and we just did it the hard way. And then it's how you work day or night, more or less 24/7 to compress the regulatory period. How you really put yourself in the shoes of the regulator to try to understand what they are optimizing for, why that regulation exists, How do you solve it in a very elegant way? So you can make technology, product and the regulation and then now you have a a very fast pace of iteration every time you get the feedback. Speaker 2 So, Jean Charles, you describe Elan as a pay writer. I I assume I'm pronouncing it correctly, right? You do both. You ensure you deliver care through the same platform, right? Most health apps tend to do 1. Does the did the economics change fundamentally when you sort of combine the 2? Why combining insurance and healthcare changes the economics Yeah, we do believe it's really the case. The experience and the economics change because like first, your member and and user, they don't want to download 7 apps for the health. They want one single point where everything is centralized and works extremely well for them. So first, it's a user need. Second, it's also an enterprise need. What I didn't show in the introduction that we sell both B to C but also B to B. We have companies from one employee to 100 and 3030 thousand employees. So the full scale of all types of company, all types of business, all type of industries plus B2C and and employers. They also don't want to manage like 22, one for insurance, one for MSK, one from like miscoscalated problem, one for for mental health, one for like prevention services. The less, the more they concentrate, the happier they are in fact. And so we are solving this problem. But then economically speaking, for example, when people talk to MO, our AI companion, or when people talk with our medical teams through telemedicine, it avoids visits in the physical world. When people take our digital program against back pain, it helps to reduce the number of physio session you need for the same outcome. When people test their vision and purchase their glasses or contact lenses in our app because you can test your glasses with augmented reality and get them delivered to your door. We save tons of money that goes back to the customer. And so yes, it help us to have a better medical loss ratio. It help us to have a better operating cost structure as well by being vertically integrated and down the line it makes us more competitive and more and more profitable, which is a good position to be in in such a market. Speaker 2 Interesting. It's it's fascinating. So, so, so do most customers come onto your platform for the preventive stuff that you offer and memberships or do they primarily come for the sort of getting themselves health insured and that sort of a facility that is provided to people who who subscribe for health insurance through you? How does it work? Speaker 1 I think usually people and organization tend to purchase with their hearts and then rationalise with their mind. And so I think a lot of people come for the full experience, the package fall in love with the what we provide and all the services that are bundled. But it's also make a lot of economical sense because we are pretty competitive in price. We are pretty competitive in terms of managing cost. We, we remove a lot of layers of intermediaries. We provide a lot of services that are bundled. And so we compare with different lines in your PNL. And so when you put everything at once, it becomes very competitive as well. And so that's a combination of it's a better experience, it's a lot more value as an employer. We help you reduce absenteeism, help you engage with your employees. Like it's really pushed as an engagement tool because it's gamified. You can compete with your Co workers, compete with other companies and so on. It's very fun to use Alan and people talk about it at the coffee machine. It's one of the most named perk on on offers, which didn't happen in the past. Nobody put the name of their health insurance on on the job offer. I know Alan is like shared and so that's why people pick up some other time. They just see the impact on their business and, and the impact on engagement and the impact on the life of their employees. The Net Promoter scar at 70, like the customer satisfaction, it's like 85 to 87% of members that would be disappointed or extremely disappointed is their employer switched from Alan. Speaker 2 OK, let me ask you a question. Let me, let me sort of ask. The way I see it, it's a structural conflict of interest. You know, you do both, you know, you cover risk, you deliver care. Are you not incentivized to sort of deliver less care and improve your claims ratio because you're sort of playing on both sides? Do you not see that as a structural conflict of interest? Speaker 1 I I think we kind of see the contrary. Our alignment of interest with our member is to get them as healthy as possible. And like the Chinese doctor claim that only get paid when, when people are healthy. And I think that's the way we think about our subscription. It's how we keep people healthy. But we, we are like, you can go to any doctor in our network and so on. So you, you're not fault to use our telemedicine and so on. Our job is just to make it the best expense possible. So yes, every insurance would like to get less claims, but we want not less claim because we don't pay for them or we block you. Like we pay very fast. We make it very similar. We want less claim because we helped you make better decision and be healthier. And I think that aligns interest very, very strongly. Speaker 2 Fine, let's shift, let's talk a little bit about AI, right. So you, you're a a, a a founding advisor with Mistral, right. Alan is also sort of holds a stake. You are deploying AI, but I guess there is a difference between deploying AI for what I call operational efficiency and excellence and then sort of using AI for clinical reasons, right? How do you guys draw a line, right? Where do you draw the line? Who draws the line? Currently there isn't much regulation around this I would assume. So how do you kind of self regulate yourself on this? How Alan is using AI across the business I think what you need is very good evaluation framework. And so indeed we see different buckets in how we use AI. There is the optimization of the work of every single employee and that we work on and we build a lot of tools. I think people underestimate how tools shape culture and how culture shape performance. And so we invest a lot in building our own operating system and how to work at Alana. We gained significant productivity and it's not about saving the software as a service cost. It's really about doing the tools that makes you a better company and make better decision faster. That's one layer. This one is not regulated, it's just how we operate. The second layer is how we reinvent full function. So we are we're working on software engineering and design and sales and marketing and automating as much as possible. Like you can see that in other industries, but I think we are one of the most advanced in our industry. Our sales team has doubled productivity in the night in the last two years. We see the same thing in marketing, but also more creativity, more automation and so on. Our operating process, our front management process are all automated customer, customer service is no roughly 50% automated. So it's massive saving that we can reinvest in product differentiation and so on. And we build all the thing internally and just it's a compounding effect. And then is how do you bring more value to your member? And that's where evaluation framework work. And so we have a few things we, but mostly it's centered about what we call MO, which is our AI personal companion for all our members. That is also our cute Mormon that is there for you anytime which is going to do a few things for you, but it's it's going to help you prepare a medical appointment. It's going to help you build a personalized prevention program that is going to be integrating integrated in our gamification engine would be like you want to prepare for a race. You want to lose weight but also we have stories of members with sick kids where more become like their live memories they dump or their thought before the appointment after the appointment or the documents and they interact with MO at every single point. There is one member who was in a toxic relationship and and then got diagnosed with cancer and use MO at all the steps on how to handle the relationship, how to manage the diagnosis of cancer, how to get prepared, what question to ask, how to save all the information in one place and so on. But MO is also your care navigator. So you can ask MO to book your next appointment and it's going to do it for you. Either call the clinic or book it, book it on the platform. So it's like a team of agents working for you. MO is going to be proactive because if you have a medical visit, it's going to check in with you two or three days later on. Do you have follow up questions? Do you want to deep dive into something? Is it easy for you to follow your treatment and how can I help? So it's really that sidekick with with you if like if you have a a lot of doctors in your family more or less. And in terms of regulatory side, we work a lot with our medical team. We have more than 130 health professionals working with us that are help us helping us train, train more, but also build the evaluation framework so we can release it and it's doctor in the loop. So we have we have agents that always look at the conversation and check if there is a risk and if it needs to be escalated to our medical team that then review the conversation and the user can escalate to to doctors. And one of the beautiful thing about modes that is not possible with LLMS with classical like model is that it's really back and forth between the AI and doctor. So if you are a user and most things that you need to speak to a doctor know the doctor will step in the same conversation. And you can do chat with doctor or tell consultation with a doctor that has the full context of your discussion with more. And so it's time save more efficient. And that continuity of care, that is amazing. Speaker 2 No, that's, it's incredible. And so, so I've I've heard, I've never used it. I have friends who live in Paris. I have people who who subscribe to you. I actually have a have a a friend of my daughter's actually, and she's young and she, she, she talks about MO and, and, and I actually spoke to her two days ago. Just to get a, a bit of framing on that. Let me let me take this AI thing a little bit further right. So, so, you know, optimists say that, you know, it will take health care to to a level of intelligence that you know, you will be able to do, you know, you'll be able to be very specific with people's health needs, right. But does that not carry a risk that people with inherent sort of higher risk of health issues will largely become uninsurable? Why AI shouldn’t determine your insurance premium I think you need need to speak to things. It's how do you use personalisation to help people, but not personalisation to tailor the risk too much. And and at least in most countries in Europe, you have a lot of regulations that block you to personalized pricing based on that data, which I think is really good. You want that kind of solidarity net health insurance, the bit about planning for your own future is, but also solidarity between people in terms of managing the risk. And, and so we, I really do believe that's important and the way we are thinking about it at the land it, it should never be about changing your your premium like what you pay. It should be changing your experience, your prevention plan, your coordination of care. And so it's a lot easier because if you start creating the wrong incentives, first you have a society problem because some people get uncovered. But even for the people that would be covered, you create an incentive to not share the bad news with you. And when you create that incentive, you cannot act on it. So for example, if I was to tell you, if you're a smoker, I'm going to increase your premium 20%, what you're going to do, you're going to lie to me and tell me you're not a smoker. And, and so I can, I could not help you stop smoking. So I prefer that you share it with me. And then if you're willing to recreate an amazing smoke cessation program that is really easy to follow and that helps you if you want stop smoking. I think that relationship of kind of friendship with your health partner with like your prevention insurance should be the car. At least that's what we are targeting to because again, we are the own users of Alan. We want to build something that we would like for us. Speaker 2 So, Jean Charles, I get it, I get it. But isn't this just isn't this the polar opposite of how this sector has evolved over the the decades? Speaker 1 Maybe, but that doesn't mean because sector has evolved in the direction that it's the right one. As you said at the beginning like people are not very happy with the service they get. They are not in love with the brand that delivers those services and they are looking for more. And I think with our bit of different way approach, we are just winning a lot of market shares. We are going over over 55% year on year and it just honestly, I try not to look at what the sector is like. I'm always trying to spend time on what would I like to get as a consumer, what would I like to get as an employer and I will build that version of it. I think that's the most interesting way. And sometimes you need to look at the competition. But in the customer lens, in the member lens, what are they getting that they love and is there a stuff they love? I want to to copy them, but that's the only thing like always be obsessed by the member and the customer. And I think one of the problem of our industry is that it took the excuse of regulation to be centered on on itself. And I think that's a really poor thing. Speaker 2 Yeah. And not just insurance, I guess lots of financial services has done that. So coming back to this sort of AI will not come back, sticking with the AI thing, right. So, so are you a firm believer that you know, AI will sort of make the insurance business model better rather than actually so make it disappear? Speaker 1 I think it might depend on the kind of risk, but I do think that AI is likely to accelerate science in healthcare and we will see more treatment and so on. But I'm not sure that is going to dramatically, dramatically reduce the cost of this treatment if any. There is hope. So I think that people are will also live longer in more and more chaotic world. And so I do think that health insurance at least and I don't know are the other segments we are really about health and what we call disability and accident insurance as well. Those are not going to disappear. They are in their in their own risk of being human. And so we, we, but we do believe we can make it 10 times better. We can make it more affordable, more personalized daily usage, more preventative, better care coordination, like always the best, the best care pathway and so the the best optimization for myself, which I think is what matter. And people are going to think less and less about insurance as only a risk coverage. But just at least that's what we see with that end, just as a subscription to better living, as a subscription to prevention, as a subscription to being taken care of both in sickness and in health. Speaker 2 No, interesting, right And, and, and talking a little bit about your business model, right. So obviously employers play a role in, in, in the in the way you sort of, I guess reach your reach your end customers, right. The story around employers playing a critical role in terms of the health of the organization, health of the workforce is something that, you know, we've been hearing for 20 years at least. You know, I was hearing it 20 years ago when I was working with one of the largest insurers in the world and I was a part of My Portfolio was as a health arm, right? But when you actually put them to test, the reality was quite different, right? In the sense it wasn't that focused on health, on health of the workforce. Have you in your time, the last 10 years of running around, have you seen a shift in that? Are you seeing employers becoming more and more determined to saying that, you know, there is a direct correlation between the workforce health and my productivity as an organization and so therefore they're they're getting more proactive. Speaker 1 There is definitely more more awareness. I think the pandemic helped create that awareness, but you also see that in the number like absenteeism sick kids are raising employers are it's very tough for them to manage that. They see the the cost of it. They see the cost in organization of not being fully productive. They, they see the request like 86%. In the latest survey we did, 86% of employers of employees consider that it's the role of the employers to make sure they, they are healthy and happy at work. And so it's, it's a matter of attractivity, it's a matter of keeping your talents. It's OK, matter of like just being a good business. And if you are in retail, you need your people like welcoming your customers smiling and energized like they will close the sale 10 times more. And so I think most businesses are trying to are starting to realize that then it's not because you realize it that you have the tools to solve it for. And I think in the past they have, they had very few tools like either you, as I said, you were purchasing many things that you were trying to patch together, but that didn't work. You didn't get usage. And so you said you spent a lot of energy for nothing. And, and what we see with us is that when you bundle everything in one expand, that starts to change. And we, we, we see the need and we see, we see the like the willingness to change. And I would not say it's the full market and you still have like in every market like ours and people moving forward faster, but you really see the the shift. Speaker 2 Can I double tap, tap on that? Are there any particular types of businesses sectors who are more akin to doing this or it's there's no sort of particular I guess segment that is emerging? Speaker 1 Honestly, we are surprised but no, it's everywhere like both in hotels and restaurants, in industrial companies, in retail, like it's different set of problems but it's the same like some have high employee turnover, some have employees that have back pain problems because they are standing up all day. Some have employees that are in slow burnout, Some have employees seated all day as they're there. Some have problem of attracting new candidates to their sector industry and they need to pitch something, some under heavy pressure or under heavy change. And so we just see that across all sector. We also won a lot of government entities, the French Ministry of Finance, the Prime Minister entities and so on, which were those needs were also very present. And so it's really across the border. Speaker 2 OK. And and I may want to ask you a question which you can say no to. Are you seeing a particular section or a particular type of ailment that is that is actually growing much faster? I think we mentioned about anxiety burnout. Are you seeing significant amounts of growth in that segment in terms of people wanting more and more preventive help? That's because there's more issue or people are waking up to the fact that they are seeking more support. Speaker 1 I think there is it's a combination of the two. Like there is more latent anxiety in the economy. I think that there might be a different vision of resilience than in the past. There is more awareness on the importance of being oneself in a world that just where the cycle times of the world are getting faster and faster, which creates maybe harder sense of belonging and and so on. So we definitely see those strands with, with the intensity of work, which is contrary to the position I have that work should be enjoyable. It should be a source of energy that you should put your your soul in and but in a way that is very rewarding to you, which is what we see with Adener. And so it's how you bring back that to society that is also really important. Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree with you. Let's double click on your your growth. So you started in France, you're now in Belgium, Spain and Canada, right? Two questions. What made you pick these three other countries, right. So you know, what's the, the, the, the method behind the madness. And the second question is how did the product travel like, you know, were there some challenges? Have you sort of tweaked the product? Is it still the same? Building one health platform across multiple countries So we, we started with, so first we, we decided we wanted to be a global company. We were not interested of being a French only company and we wanted to be truly global and the first truly global platform about prevention insurance. And so we started quite early going outside of France in our journey when we are very small, in fact like 100,000 members, because we felt that if we were not doing it early, we will not create the DNA of the company of being global first. Then we, when we decided to start, we said, OK, let's start in Europe because our French license allows us to passport in Europe. And let's take not one, only one country, because if we take only one and we fail, we won't know if we fail because international doesn't wear off if we pick the wrong country off with being the wrong leadership. So make it harder. So, so let's pick two. It will be a bit harder, but we will have more data. Let's not pick three because it would be too hard. And we pick Belgium and Spain because they were a neighboring country with Belgium, which was a complementary system like France, so very similar and spending a supplementary system, meaning that you either you go to public, it's totally free, either you, you go in a private network. And we thought we would learn with Spain something. And if we managed to do Spain, it would increase our total addressable market. Then being successful, starting being successful in those two countries we looked at should we keep expanding in Europe? But what is it going to teach us or should we again walk back one from being a global company and say, OK, we want to be global and so let's prove ourselves that we get get a license outside of Europe. And Canada was a country where there were a lot of similarities with Europe, but also a lot of differences. Quite very big market, quite oligopolistic, not a new player in like many decades big B2B market. And so we, we went for Canada, but what we spent a lot of resources as a company was to build a global platform where we are going to have the same claim management system, the same underwriting system, the same app, the same set prevention services across country with a global local approach. Where we still have localization teams that build and connect to the pipe of the SCA system that adapt the insurance coverage that adds some features that are only specific to the country when we need it. And so that we try to have the best mix of a global platform, global technology as shared component as possible and the few personalisations that we need. Even if when you look bottom line, the jobs to be done is the same. It's like great tools for employers, great, great platform for employees, fast reimbursement, fast education, front management, transparency on price and care verticalization. So it's a lot of the same building blocks, in fact. Speaker 2 So interesting. So, so let me try and triangulate this question. So you, you, you've now operating in four countries and some of them in scale, some of these are varied. You've had a very impressive raise recently. So congratulations on it. How's this all coming together? So, A, where are you going to spend all that money? And B, are some other countries now in the offing? Are you going to take on the big beasts? Speaker 1 So the goal is to we are in four countries and it's to double the number of countries in the next 18 months. Oh, wow. And so it's quite aggressive international expansion. Speaker 2 Mostly Europe or are. Speaker 1 You not only Europe, very different places again, I we are trying to Glen flags in geographies where we can learn, expand then and and build a truly global company with a combination of very high gross markets, more mature ones and so on. And so we are very excited about that. We cannot share the geographies because it's under regulatory processes and so on. But the idea is really to accelerate the expansions thanks to the other work on globalization we have done in the past 2, two or three years. Speaker 2 And what does that mean for your organization? So you know, how, how do you see this? How do you see this from not just the technology and the stack perspective, but also from the ability to actually run the business? Speaker 1 So my job is to hire amazing leaders for every function, but also for every country that's really still on power to build thanks to our asset, but also to localize what needs to be localized. And so the job is really it's at the end of the day, it's about finding the right people to with the right commercial sense, the right project and strategic sense that has the right attention to details to run the operation. But that can leverage a lot of the playbook on the technological platform and operating system we have already built, which help us launch country faster and faster. Speaker 2 OK. And is there, is there a particular sort of archetype of a country that suits the Alan model more because I'm assuming some of these are fairly different. So or you you feel that actually health health insurance everywhere is suffering from similar problems so you could actually tackle it. Speaker 1 Yeah. What is really interesting is that when you talk to someone in the country, they all feel their problem are very acute but very specific, but they are all the same across the globe. And and healthcare being like 10 to 20% of GDP in mod geographies. It's big even in small countries it's meaningful. You can build like hundreds of 1,000,000 multi billions, 10s of billions businesses in in most countries. And so our goal is to find countries where we think we can become #1 because of the way the market is structured, the way we think we would be really differentiated with our offering. Usually there is a strong B to B distribution. We like it because we build very strong distribution both for SMEs to enterprise and where we also find great leaders. I think it's a lot of we are looking at many countries, but we decide to launch them only when we find someone that we think is going to make us very successful locally. Speaker 2 No, interesting. I'm conscious of time. I've got I've got two last questions. One of them is a is a is a bit of a sequence we run. We basically call it myth or reality. So I'm just going to ask you 3 questions. Let me know if you think it's a myth or reality. So the first one is insurers make money when you stay sick. Prevention is bad for their business model. Speaker 1 It's totally a meat, especially in healthcare, you know? Speaker 2 Perfect. Yeah, I will personalize health insurance pricing to an extent and I think we talked a little bit about that, that high risk people will become uninsurable. I don't think this is an Alan question, but do you, do you personally think that this is a concern? Speaker 1 I think that in most geographies it's going to be regulated by state and it's going to be coming possible. Speaker 2 It's coming soon, and then the future of health insurance is largely going to be dictated by employers, right? Companies will become primary healthcare enablers. Delivery platforms. Speaker 1 I do believe it's, it's true. I do think that when you what you see in every country that states are not able to sustain the cost of the healthcare system. We sit in France, we every year we get hundreds of millions of billions transferred from the state to the private sector in terms of coverage and that's going to get bigger and bigger in my opinion. Speaker 2 And, and, and just just on that as segue, I think, I think, you know, prevention is something that we've been talking about for ages, right? You're starting to see this as a shift, correct, in the sense, you know, people are wearing whoops and you know, their Apple phones and, and you know, ECG checks and so on and so forth. So, so do do you really think that this is all coming together in terms of the prevention side? Speaker 1 That's my view. Like you, you have always different edges in the market and so you have like a small, very small percentage of the population that is going very, very deep. But then that's spread progressively and what you see that the depth is a lot higher that it was 10 or 20 years ago, but also the level of awareness and the importance of it is getting a lot stronger. So for example, we just launched Allen Precision in France, which is our 85 biomarkers advanced blood test available for our members. And the the take up rate is just amazing, like people are chasing it in the app to get the personalized and tailored prevention plans. And it's a lot bigger than what we initially estimated because it's just a Latin need. And people are not served by the classical system. They want to get more. They want to solve their own problems. And it comes from people from every kind of population and so on, which is very, very interesting. So yeah, I do think it's going to profoundly change. Speaker 2 My last question to you, what is the one thing going on in health insurance that people aren't talking enough about but deserves more attention? The future of hyper-personalized health insuranceSOCIAL LINKSArjun's LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunvirsingh/Couchonomics LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/couchonomics-with-arjun-singh/Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/couchonomics/Twitter (X) → https://twitter.com/Arjun_Vir_SinghTikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@couchonomicsNewsletter → https://bit.ly/3WI4A6EPARTNERSCouchonomics with Arjun Season 04 is brought to you by:Adyen → https://www.adyen.com/Thunes → https://thunes.com/Mastercard → https://mastercard.com/e& → https://www.eand.com/Digit9 → https://www.digitnine.com/SC Ventures → https://scventures.io/#CouchonomicsWithArjun #Alan #HealthInsurance #HealthTech #InsurTech #AI #PreventiveHealthcare #DigitalHealth I think it's really about the hyper personalisation of experiences. I think one of The thing is people are going to expect that their experience with you is going to be tailored to who they are, even if the coverage maybe turned out the premium. Like you should not have the same app as the same experience if you are type 2 diabetic person or if you are a pregnant woman or if you are someone in your 20s preparing for a race. And and so I really do believe that it should be the core discussion that people have and how do I hyper personalized my experience, But you need to own the technological infrastructure that most people don't. Speaker 2 Interesting, interesting. I'm going to ask you one more question because that just flashed through my head. OK, here's my fear. My fear is all these tools, self prevention, awareness, you know, ECG checks and so on so forth is giving some of us people this sort of false hope that we've actually become doctors ourselves, OK. Is there a genuine risk that we are carrying that people are trying to self diagnose themselves, self medicate themselves, do a lot of self self which is actually creating a problem if it starts to happen in big numbers? Speaker 1 The question is why people are doing that today. And I think the, it's like, usually we tend to think that on average, like society tends to think that people are irrational or stupid, but they do that because they don't get what they need from the system. Their problem doesn't get solved. They don't find information. Sometimes to see a specialist, it takes 6 to 8 months. And so they are trying to find like their own way to solve their own problem. And so I want more people to solve their own problem. But that's why I do think that I think the trusted platform where you merge that self-care with medical expertise is really, really important. And you should not oppose the two. But if you believe that it's only going to go through doctor you, it's just an illusion because there is a mismatch between offer and and demand with between supply and demand. And so we just need to understand what is at stake for citizen, for people that want to take care about themselves, that we will not be able to solve that with only more people on the other side. And so we need to blend technology and doctor and expertise to make it happen. But yes, it's a risk, but it's a risk that we need to tackle by building amazing project, building amazing solution. I think that people get lost on on the rigid threads without any scientific evidence, but other, but also based on the experience of people and try to merge these two words as much as possible in my opinion. Speaker 2 Yeah, interesting. And I and I and I do, I do agree with you. And I think that that's, that's a perfect setting. I think you're doing a wonderful job. And, and I obviously we do not know which geographies you're coming to, but if you're coming to any of the geographies that I live in and I travel to, you definitely have one subscriber or member in, in, in me and, and my extended family. I really appreciate you making time and, and coming on the show. Hopefully we'll get to see you in person. I do come to, I do come to France regularly enough. And I think I'm back there in, in, in July. So I made made sort of come down and knock, knock on your door and sort of get a first hand experience of how Elan operates and and best of luck for the future. Speaker 1 Thank you very much for the amazing discussion and the the depths of what you shared on the question, the understanding of what we do, that was really enjoyable. Thank you. Speaker 2 Appreciate that, appreciate that. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. That was Jean Charles. He's the Co founder and CEO of Alan. If you do live in France, in Spain, in Belgium and Canada and if you have not become a member, please do so. I'm not on any Commission rate, but I suggest, I think it's a cool app. I've spoken to my sort of goddaughter and she was telling me it's quite cool. So with that, I'll say goodbye and we'll see you next week. Bye bye.