Meeri Savolainen: Inzmo... Driving home rental resilience

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Meeri Savolainen, CEO and co-founder of Inzmo, a fast-growing European financial services provider that makes renting a home affordable for everyone.  Inzmo is considered the fourth runner-up in creating a new standard for how people rent their homes. With more than 70,000 customers and over 400% growth in 2022, Inzmo has acquired recognition and investments from several insurers in Europe As an entrepreneur by trade, Meeri is passionate about breaking new ground to lead social change. She shares that the core innovation lies in understanding customer needs, struggles, and their values. "At Inzmo, we design our services around this purpose - this is what makes us authentic. We put the customer first.”  During their discussion, they cover what makes Inzmo a leader in its category across Europe’s rental and cash deposit markets, Meeri’s interest in communication, relationships, and psychology, and Inzmo’s innovation journey across Europe… Opportunities and challenges, and Team Inzmo: What is next to scale? KEY TAKEAWAYS I was a corporate and tax lawyer for quite a few years at Ernst & Young, and I started thinking that I wanted to grow more, take more risks, and become an entrepreneur. When I began Inzmo with my co-founder, we wanted to create a digital disruption in the insurance industry because it was lagging behind in technology. As things progressed, we wanted to build a strong brand in the insurance sector. We wanted to mediate our own products. We didn’t just want to be an IT company or an enabler for insurance companies. Since 2016, we’ve become more consumer-focused. We’re driving innovation in the insurance industry by automating underwriting processes and, first and foremost, the customer experience. We believe future success for insurance companies and InsurTechs relies on customer success and experience. We understand that the majority of our customers are also vendors, and 80% of those customers are living paycheque to paycheque. This means they have a daily financial burden, and 40% of their income goes toward rent, utilities, etc. These are the people we want to help with our different financial and digital solutions. Insurance is a very male-dominated industry, though it is getting better. I’m proud to say that at Inzmo, 50% of the employees are women, and 60% of the C-level/ management staff are female. Being a woman gives us many more opportunities to stand out. It’s also good for PR – especially for a small company like Inzmo, which doesn’t have an unlimited budget – to gain visibility. It does, of course, have its downsides as well. Women struggle more to secure VC funding because they need to prove their success more than men do. After all, there’s still a strong bias, even though the data proves otherwise. BEST MOMENTS ‘We’re always trying to find our niche. We don’t want to be another traditional insurance company or fight with the bigger companies.’ 'Renting rather than home ownership is a growing trend globally because people want a flexible lifestyle. We want to be an enabler in this new lifestyle.’ ‘Inzmo means “insurance” and “mobile,” insurance that is always accessible – it’s instant, it’s always there, and very easy to follow.’ ‘We’ve been focused on the German market so that we could prove we’d done well in one very significant market, but in the next 12-24 months, we’re ready to expand to other European rental markets, the most interesting to us are Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Meeri, also known as Mrs InsurTech, is strongly driven by innovation, focusing on the development of new products, services, and processes in a forward-thinking world.  She specialized in developing innovative, creative, and visionary products and services for the insurance sector. A serial entrepreneur with a passion for breaking new ground to lead social change, with management experience and the ability to lead and build high-performing teams. She is interested in communication and relationship psychology, and is currently also developing her knowledge of Strategic Intervention (also known as SI). SI is dedicated to extracting the most practical and effective forms of strategic action and communication from various disciplines: Ericksonian therapy, Human Needs Psychology, organizational psychology, neurolinguistics, psychology of influence, strategic studies, traditions of diplomacy and negotiation, and others. A practical method for acting strategically to get things done is to fulfill and elevate human needs. ABOUT INZMO Inzmo is a fast-growing financial services provider in Europe, making renting a home affordable for everyone. The team’s aim is to become #1 provider of zero-deposit solutions for EU renters. We believe the core innovation lies in understanding customer needs, struggles, and their values. Inzmo designs services around this purpose - this is what makes the team truly authentic. Inzmo puts the customer first. Always. The team thinks big, takes risks, innovates constantly, hires the best, and strives to earn customers' trust. Inzmo is the fourth runner in creating a new standard for how people rent their homes. With over 70,000 customers and 400% growth in 2022, Inzmo has attracted recognition and investment from several insurers in Europe. In 2017, the company was recognized as the best fintech company in the StartUp Europe Awards by the European Commission, and in 2019, was awarded as the Insurance Shaper of the Year. Inzmo's customers are renters, primarily for mid-term and long-term rental homes. Today, finding a home online might be easy, but the road to moving in is time-consuming, as the EU's 600 billion EUR annual private rental market still operates offline. To finalize a rental agreement, one must provide proof of income, a cash deposit (3 months' rent), home contents, and liability insurance. This takes 1-2 weeks and requires a cash deposit of thousands of euros. Inzmo solves all four pain points with one insurance product you can get online in seconds for a small monthly premium. As Inzmo focuses on covering each customer when they sign up for a rental home, the team sees this as an opportunity to serve them throughout the rental cycle with different insurance products and services. More on Inzmo on their site and LinkedIn profile. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]