Insurance app Lemonade prepares for European expansion

Lemonade this morning revealed plans to expand into the European market. The news marks the first international expansion for the AI-powered insurance app, which launched in New York City, back in 2016.

The official announcement issued by the company is extremely light on detail, with the promise to reveal more pertinent information — namely which country will be the first on its list — “shortly.” Instead, the news is a bit of flag planting from the company, as it navigates the tricky international insurance waters.

It also notably comes a few months after the startup dropped a short-lived lawsuit alleging that German company WeFox had essentially reverse engineered the Lemonade model for ONE Insurance. “We intend to defend ourselves vigorously,” Wefox’s founder told TechCrunch at the time. “This lawsuit appears to be an attempt to bait the media into covering a non-issue.” Court filings showed that the suit was unceremoniously dropped.

For its part, Lemonade is positioning its global expansion among the list of some of tech’s most successful names in recent years.

“Whether in Chicago, Paris, or Singapore, today’s consumers listen to music on Spotify, ride with Uber, and stay with Airbnb. Great digital brands don’t stop at the water’s edge,” Lemonade CEO Daniel Schreiber said in a press release. “That’s why going global feels so natural for us: consumers are increasingly cosmopolitan, socially aware, and tech-native – everything Lemonade was built to be.”

The age of the digital startup has certainly afforded companies a more rapid path to international success, though the list of companies cited does, perhaps unintentionally point to some of the difficulties dealing with local regulations. And healthcare has enough complex nuances to put even song publishing to shame.