Celebrating Lassie’s $75M Series C announcement, Andreas was joined by Hedda Båverud Olsson, Founder & CEO of Lassie, and Rob Moffat, Partner at Balderton Capital.
It’s one of the largest European insurtech rounds of the past year.
Lassie might be one of the clearest examples in Europe of what people mean when they say “agentic AI” — not as a concept, not as a demo, but as something that’s already running in production and quietly doing real work.
And it’s happening in… insurance.
Insurance Is One of Those Things You Ignore Until You Can’t
Pet insurance is the perfect example.
Most people don’t care about it. They don’t talk about it. They don’t shop around for it like they do flights or phones.
Until something happens.
Then suddenly it’s stress, vet bills, paperwork, waiting, uncertainty — and a weird feeling that you’re fighting the system at the exact moment you’re already emotionally fried.
And this is only getting more intense.
Across Europe, over 90% of pet owners now say their pets are family. At the same time, veterinary costs keep climbing. The global pet insurance market is expected to hit $80bn by 2033, and the broader pet care market is heading toward $428bn.
So you get this collision:
People care more than ever, and it’s getting more expensive than ever.
That’s usually where old systems start breaking.
Lassie Isn’t Really Building “Insurance”
This is the part that’s easy to miss.
Lassie doesn’t talk like they’re trying to be “a better insurer.”
They talk like they’re building a prevention-first pet health platform.
Insurance is just the base layer — the thing that makes the model work.
And they’re already at serious scale:
~250,000 pets insured (close to one million paws, which is objectively a great unit of measurement)
Live in Sweden, Germany, and France
Over $100M in ARR
25% daily active users (in insurance!!)
In Germany, they process 60% of claims end-to-end in ~6 minutes
Six minutes.
Not “we’re exploring AI.”
Not “we’re building a chatbot.”
Not “AI-assisted workflows.”
Six-minute claims, paid.
A customer uploads a photo of a vet bill, and the system handles the process. Money lands fast.
That’s what “agentic” is supposed to mean. The AI isn’t talking — it’s doing.
The Thing About AI Agents Is: Most of Them Don’t Exist Yet
There’s so much hype right now around AI agents.
But if we’re honest, in most industries we’re still in the “experimenting” phase.
Insurance is different.
It’s structured.
It’s rules-heavy.
It’s document-heavy.
It’s full of repetitive workflows.
It’s basically a dream environment for automation.
And what Lassie has done (which feels genuinely rare) is use AI not just to reduce internal cost — but to make the customer experience noticeably better.
That’s important.
Because speed isn’t just efficiency.
In insurance, speed is trust.
The Most Surprising Metric Isn’t Claims — It’s Engagement
If I had to pick one number that really stayed with me, it wasn’t the claims automation.
It was this: 25% daily active users.
In insurance.
That’s… not normal.
Most insurers interact with customers maybe once a year — at renewal, or when something goes wrong.
Lassie interacts daily.
And the reason is simple: the app isn’t just a claims tool.
It teaches people how to care for their pets.
It tracks behaviour.
It rewards preventive actions.
And it even reduces premiums when people engage in healthier habits.
So insurance stops being something you only think about when life goes wrong.
It becomes a product people actually use.
That shift is hard to overstate.
Because once you have daily engagement, you’re no longer competing purely on underwriting.
You’re competing on habit.
Scaling Europe Is Brutal (Which Is Why This Is Impressive)
This story is also interesting because it’s happening in Europe — where scaling consumer businesses is… character-building.
Different regulations.
Different languages.
Different consumer expectations.
Different distribution channels.
But Rob made a good point: once you build those muscles, Europe becomes defensible in a way the US often isn’t.
Lassie started in Sweden, which is one of the most competitive pet insurance markets in the world. That forced them to get good early.
Then they expanded into Germany and France, but they didn’t do the classic “light touch” expansion.
They localised deeply, stayed close to the market, and didn’t outsource the hard parts.
Founder involvement wasn’t delegated.
They went all in.
Why Incumbents Struggle (Even When They Try)
Incumbents aren’t stupid. They see AI. They’re investing.
But big insurers carry weight:
legacy systems
slow decision-making
regulatory caution
internal resistance to automation
And when AI becomes a strategic imperative, speed matters.
AI-native startups have structural advantages:
They can move faster.
They can ship more.
They don’t have internal politics about replacing workflows.
Some incumbents will adapt.
Many won’t.
The Founder Story Isn’t a Footnote
Hedda is the daughter of a veterinarian.
And you can feel that in how Lassie talks about the product.
This isn’t “let’s optimise loss ratios.”
It’s “let’s keep pets healthier.”
That difference matters more than people like to admit — especially in consumer financial products, where trust is fragile and intent comes through fast.
What This Round Really Signals
This $75M Series C — backed by Balderton, Felix, Inventure, Passion, and Stena Sessan — isn’t just a big round.
It’s fuel for the next phase:
expanding further across Europe
pushing claims automation even deeper
building more partnerships in the pet ecosystem (Lidl, Tractive, and beyond)
And this is where Lassie starts to look less like an insurer…
…and more like a platform.
Because once you combine:
daily engagement + automation + prevention incentives + localisation
you get something that’s much harder to copy than “cheap premiums.”
The Bigger Takeaway
If you’re looking for real AI use cases in Europe right now, insurance should be high on the list.
Not because it’s sexy, but because it’s operationally messy, document-heavy, and trust-based. And when AI works in that environment, the customer feels it immediately.
