The journey of Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, founder of Alan

Alan is the new French unicorn which aims to facilitate your medical reimbursements. This operation, generally perceived as a real obstacle course, is simplified in a few clicks thanks to the application developed by a graduate of the École des Ponts ParisTech. Focus on the journey of its co-founder, Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve.

Today, more than 9,000 companies and thousands of self-employed people trust the startup for their medical protection. In total, this represents nearly 150,000 active users on the Alan platform. Recently, the startup raised 185 million euros, valuing it at 1.4 billion euros. Alan therefore becomes a new French unicorn and joins a very exclusive club in which we only find a few companies like OVHCloud, Blablacar, Voodoo or Doctolib.

Behind this revolutionary service founded in 2016 is Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, graduated from École des Ponts ParisTech. His goal? Make it easier for everyone to understand a complex subject, health insurance. He also indicates that with “Alan, we are seeking to transform health, to make it fairer, more accessible, more transparent. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

The academic and professional career of Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, founder of Alan

Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve completed an MP preparatory class (mathematics-physics). Following this, he joined the École des Ponts ParisTech where he obtained a Master’s Degree in Engineering Mathematics and Economics.

He subsequently joined the Institute of Actuaries where he acquired expertise in risk assessment and management. It focuses mainly on the economic and insurance dimensions.

In 2010, he obtained an MBA in Management from the College of Engineers. The same year, the young entrepreneur launches Expliseat, a project that revolutionized airplane seats for economy class, making them lighter. He oversaw this business for 5 years before embarking on a new adventure to realize his childhood dream. “I lost my grandfather to cancer and I asked myself: do I want to continue selling airplane seats or do what I’ve dreamed of since I was 14 and revolutionize healthcare?” he declared during a interview made with Matthieu Stefani.

It was therefore in 2016 that he launched Alan, the health application offering personalized access to health insurance coverage and whose primary ambition is to make life easier for individuals and businesses.

The “Healthy Business” management of Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve

Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve explains to Raw Media : “ We believe that everyone should have the right to work in a company they trust and love. » To do this, he has adopted three principles to reconcile well-being and performance at work:

Rethink failure by valuing it more often. “ We are singled out, we get fired if we fail », This is the observation that Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve draws in an interview. For the founder of the new unicorn, failure must be seen as an opportunity for development. This helps its teams not to censor themselves and take risks.
Make everyone responsible and remove managers. Each week, employees have a certain number of goals to meet. “Ona a feedback loop. That is to say, if someone sets goals that go in all directions, we will help the person to focus on the right things through positive feedback.”, explains Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve. Furthermore, Alan has opted for a coaching system allowing each employee to ask the right questions about their career.
No meetings. Alan’s teams prioritize transparency. They therefore opted for an internal forum for decision-making. “ Every time there is a meeting, we open a post in the forum and there is a discussion with the right people to arrive at an answer. Anyone could access these discussions, but only those who are concerned do so or those who want to do so. This helps avoid email loops (…). And that’s super powerful », specifies the CEO of Alan.

Alan’s origins and mission

Alan’s mission is to put new technologies at the service of humans to improve the physical and mental health of individuals. All teams are mobilized to “making the health system fairer, more transparent and more personal.”

The co-founders, including Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, started from the observation that European countries devote a large part of their GDP to the health sector. France, in this case, ranks at the top of the countries which devote the most importance to the health of its citizens and dedicates an envelope of 270 billion euros per year to health. However, there are still dysfunctions and areas for improvement. The company highlights a few:

“increasingly long delays;

a quality of care that is not measured, and therefore variable;

significant inequalities in terms of access to care and information based on social background, age, income, etc.

a worrying increase in burn-out among professionals;

the administrative burden due to antediluvian procedures and differences in resources between community medicine and hospitals.”

Alan was therefore born with the logic of lightening the mental burden that administrative procedures could represent and thus putting everyone’s needs at the heart of the French healthcare system.

Alan first started by setting up health insurance to allow all the stakeholders involved (doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, citizens, etc.) to interact with each other. The company quickly became the only 100% online independent health insurance approved by the Banque de France.

Today, Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve indicates thatAlan wants to develop a medical concierge service, to allow more natural interaction between users and the medical profession. The startup also wishes to give all members the opportunity to make a checkup as soon as they subscribe to Alan insurance, to have a more global view of their state of health.

Alan’s fundraisers

The insurer specializing in complementary health insurance has raised a total of nearly 275 million euros in funds in just four years. Its concept strongly appealed to investors who invested massively in the Alan project.

Its first fundraising took place in October 2016, just a few months after its launch. The startup raised 12 million euros in Seed Round, from CNP Assurances and Partech. The second round of funding took place in 2018. The company raised nearly 23 million euros from prestigious investors (Xavier Niel, CNP Assurance, Partech).

In February 2019, Alan raised 40 million euros from Index Ventures and certain DST Global partners. A year later, a new round of financing allows the startup to raise 50 million euros from Index Ventures and Temasek Holdings.

A few months after reaching the milestone of 100,000 policyholders, Alan managed to achieve the largest fundraising in the history of French InsurTech and the second largest in the world. The young company has in this case concluded a 185 million euros Series D round. This fundraising was led by the Coatue Management fund. Alan is thus valued at more than 1.4 billion euros, which makes it the new French unicorn.

Alan’s key figures

160,000 members and more than 9,400 businesses have trusted Alan with their health insurance. In addition, the startup founded by Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve raised 275 million euros in funds between 2016 and 2021 and its annual revenues amount to 100 million euros. The company covered, in 2019, “six times the solvency capital requirement, compared to 2.8 times on average in the non-life insurance market in France, in 2019. Alan also covers more than 17 times the level of minimum capital required (2, 5 million euros) by regulation”, according to the SFCR report.

Furthermore, Alan undertakes to respect a response time of 2 minutes to its members and a reimbursement time of 85% in less than an hour. Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve specifies, during an interview with Madyness : ”Today, we respond to 85% of refunds that reach us in less than an hour. A very difficult model to industrialize at the start, when we fill everything by hand. The tools deployed allowing doctors to correspond with policyholders are part of this approach. Automation has the dual benefit of reducing prices for customers, while providing them with immediacy. Personalization is strategic if we want to be effective in terms of prevention.”

Other key figures about Alan