The European end-to-end rentals specialist Spotahome has teamed up with the digital insurance company Tuio to offer its landlords and customers content insurance.
Unlike most other policies, the new insurance product offered to Spotahome's landlords covers not only the landlord but also the tenants and their possessions as well - a first for the Spanish market according to a company blog post. The new service is all online and managed through Spotahome's app and is offered to compliment the Madrid-based proptech's existing protection for landlords including payment insurance, damage insurance and tenant verification.
The new product appears to be aimed solely at customers and landlords in the company's primary Spanish market with similar products apparently already available in other markets that Spotahome operates in such as France, Germany and The Netherlands.
"Although the incidence rate in the medium and long-term rental sector is much lower than with other rental models, we're working to reduce and minimise the impact", said Álvaro Marín, Spanish Market Lead at Spotahome.
Having been founded in 2014 by four young entrepreneurs as a solution to what they saw as a lack of trust and service in the housing market for young people looking to move to a new country, Spotahome made headlines in 2018 when its end-to-end rental model convinced Silicon Valley fund Kleiner Perkins to invest $40 million.
After failing to establish a strong foothold in several new markets including the Middle East and Eastern Europe and seeing its revenue decimated by pandemic lockdown orders, 2020 saw the firm forced to go cap in hand to investors and cut a reported 80% of its staff.
With increasing demand among young professionals to work remotely, the company has changed its model slightly moving towards longer-term rentals and signing up former Airbnb landlords affected by a lack of international tourism. The company has raised around $93 million in funding according to Crunchbase and achieved profitability at the beginning of 2021.