He is now followed by more than half a million people on social media. Insurance broker Bastian Kunkel guides the uninformed through the jungle of terms and conditions on YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok. In an interview, he reveals which types of insurance are really necessary and whether Germans are over-insured.
Mr. Kunkel, why is the subject of insurance so hated by so many?
Bastian Kunkel: On the one hand, the insurance industry has earned this bad reputation for itself over the past few years and decades. Certain market participants have ripped people off and made a lot of money doing it. The press spread it. Think of the incentive trips offered by some insurers or the scandal surrounding insurance company Mehmet Göker.
You mean, for example, the Ergo subsidiary Hamburg Mannheimer, which paid its employees prostitutes on a trip. Göker, in turn, maneuvered his company into bankruptcy and was on trial for various allegations.
Bastian Kunkel, 35, is a qualified insurance and finance clerk and studied business administration and law in Aschaffenburg. The insurance broker translates the complicated insurance language into simple German on his social media channels. His book on this topic was recently published: “Totally insured (un)insured: What you should know about insurance at the age of 18, but still don’t know at the age of 30”.
All topics that have caused the insurance industry to lose a great deal of its image. And the media has seen negative insurance headlines sell. You will never read in the Bild newspaper that Ms. Müller can continue to exist financially because she had taken out disability insurance and paid for it. Although that’s the rule. Instead, you only ever hear about cases in which the insurance company refuses to pay. A distorted picture emerges and people think: ‘Yeah, of course, at the end of the day they won’t pay anyway, so why should I sign something?’ The danger is that you make decisions for or against insurance based on a certain opinion. Parents often tell their children, ‘Don’t do that, they’re all crooks, cutthroats, vultures’. And the children then adopt this opinion.
The language probably isn’t very helpful either, is it?
Insurance German is simply very complicated. Absolutely. That’s on top of that. Language plays a crucial role in trust. If you have an insurance contract in front of you but only understand the train station, that does not promote trust. If I don’t understand what’s in there, I’m also unsure about a claim. The opposite should be the case, instead of feeling insecure, you should feel safe. As a rule, you have 50 or more pages of insurance terms and conditions in front of you. If you don’t have a law degree, it’s going to be difficult to understand. Insurance conditions and insurance texts need to become much simpler and easier to understand so that people can rebuild that trust.
Nevertheless, you still work as an insurance broker. Why did you want to be that?
I never wanted to be an insurance broker. I think it’s very rare for someone to wake up in the morning and say, ‘That’s it! I want to mediate insurance.’ For me, it was more of a coincidence that I did my apprenticeship as an insurance and finance clerk after completing my vocational diploma. It sounded like a solid education. After that I studied business administration and law. Only then did I start my business as an insurance broker. Even then, the challenge was to bring people closer to this often hated topic. This challenge drives me to this day.
You’re no longer knocking around door-to-door selling insurance. What’s your strategy today?
The classic way of working, the typical door-to-door knocking, the cold calling – that just wasn’t fun. So my thoughts in spring 2016 were: How can these people find me? Youtube seemed to me to be the right platform for this. Since then, I’ve been translating the complicated insurance conditions into understandable German, trying to take away the fear of insurance.
What are the advantages of YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram?
I don’t meet the negative expectations of the people there. People expect a guy in a suit to talk them into some kind of insurance they don’t want. I’ll just explain first. This is how people understand what insurance they might need. It’s about education, but of course also about marketing for our service. If you want, you can take out disability insurance, private health insurance or old-age provision through us or have existing contracts checked. Everything then runs digitally, from online advice to the contract, which is concluded with a digital signature. In this way, I mainly reach young people, although they are said to be not interested in finance or insurance. That’s not true. One of the most common comments on my videos on TikTok is, ‘Why didn’t I learn that in school?’
How many people actually take out insurance with you afterwards?
That’s difficult to measure. But we ask about this before the consultation. So we learned that most people come via Youtube, then Instagram and Tiktok. Youtube is a search engine. People who are looking for information about insurance often end up automatically on my YouTube channel. In many cases, they then click on the link to our consultation and make an appointment with one of my consultants.
Why did you still write a classic book at all?
Writing with the book has always been a wish. As a teenager I was an absolute bookworm and a late bloomer. My world was books. I just never knew what topic to write about. This has become increasingly clear to me over the past few years. But I didn’t want to write an insurance guide either, no one likes to read it. This may serve as a sleep aid, but it’s not something that many people would like to buy. Over the past year, more and more followers and friends have been asking me which book about insurance I would recommend. I couldn’t think of any, except for the dry specialist literature from my studies. That was the initial spark to simply write a book myself. My biggest motivation was the thought that a book is something different than a YouTube or Tiktok video. It is something lasting that you can pick up or give as a gift.
What kind of insurance do 18 or 30 year olds really need?
Insurance is a very individual subject. Blanket recommendations usually rarely work. Health insurance is a must for everyone, as is private liability insurance. It protects you when you accidentally harm someone else. Property damage and above all personal injury can quickly become really expensive. If you depend on your active income from work, you should consider taking out disability insurance. If you can no longer practice your last job, you receive a monthly pension from them to maintain the standard of living you have achieved up to that point. Anyone who completes it at the age of 18 pays significantly less and is usually accepted. This is the biggest difficulty with this insurance. If you don’t want to take it out until you are 30, but maybe you were already ill, many insurance companies will no longer accept you. Term life insurance that pays out a certain sum in the event of death can be useful for families. Inexpensive unit-linked private pension insurance should also be looked at. Traditional annuity insurance, which only yields guaranteed interest, no longer makes sense these days.
Are the Germans overinsured?
The Germans have insurance that they don’t really need, and they have a lot of it. At the same time, they lack the most important basic insurances. Very many have comprehensive insurance for their cars, but no comprehensive insurance for their own employees. Very many have mobile phone insurance, but have not yet done anything for their own retirement provision. The awareness of which insurance you really need can still be improved.
Aside from making the wrong choice of insurance, what are the biggest mistakes when buying it?
That it doesn’t even come to that because you keep putting off taking out insurance. If you are unsure about disability or private health insurance, you should consult an expert. Incidentally, he or she is also liable for his or her statements. I don’t do my tax return myself, I go to a tax advisor. And when I’m sick, I go to the doctor and I don’t google my diagnosis together. Unfortunately, it is sometimes simply not possible to fully understand an insurance contract yourself.
What was the most bizarre insurance policy you have ever taken out for a client or client?
Unfortunately, the everyday life of many insurance brokers is not that spectacular. There are insurance policies to insure your buttocks or protect yourself against alien abduction. I once insured a tennis pro against sports disability.
Which insurance do most of your customers want?
For us, it is most often about disability insurance, but also about old-age provision and private health insurance. These are the most complex insurances. It usually takes several weeks to complete a degree with us, because you have to check your health status and maybe request documents from the health insurance company. Health issues are the biggest target. If these are not answered intelligently, the insurer can later say that it will not pay due to a pre-contractual breach of the duty of disclosure. It is often decided when the insurance is taken out whether the insurer will pay later or not.
Precisely because of health issues, many do not get private health or disability insurance. But everyone has something, and in the future Long Covid should also play a role. Will insurers be able to afford this screening in the future?
The question is usually whether the complaints have already been documented somewhere. I don’t want to judge whether it’s discrimination if you’re rejected because of certain illnesses. Insurers are private companies that can usually set their own acceptance policies. However, my wish would be that issues such as occupational disability or medical expenses would be reconsidered. The insurers must start beforehand and not only when the child has already fallen into the well. From a purely economic point of view, that would probably also be cheaper. The money they pay for services in many cases could also be used for prevention. People would then get a completely different image of insurance. Offers for psychotherapy or special back training can prevent later burn-outs or back diseases. I like the image of an insurer taking care of their policyholders before anything goes wrong, thereby possibly preventing worse.
Laura Eßlinger spoke to Bastian Kunkel
The interview is first at capital published