Starting Again at 65: Rosaline Koo on Building covee’s AI Insurance Ecosystem | E741

From BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English) Jeremy Au

Rosaline Chow Koo, founder of covee and formerly of CXA, traces her path from a Procter & Gamble plant in Iowa and banking to insurance in Singapore, where she grew Mercer's Asia business 800% and went from 4 to 14 countries. She left at 51 to build CXA, a tech-led benefits brokerage that won 500 companies in five years, funded partly by her husband's $3 million. An 11-year SaaS contract with a bank, 150 contract engineers and COVID forced her to sell the brokers and the platform. She describes the shame that followed, caring for her 97-year-old mother, and why AI brought her back: three people built in eight hours what 330 could not, and she says reading a policy now takes a minute instead of 30 to 40 hours.

Rosaline’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosaline-chow-koo-212334/

covee: https://www.covee.ai/

Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/rosaline-chow-koo-covee-ai

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#InsurTech #Founders #SoutheastAsia #EmployeeBenefits #HealthTech #AI #Singapore #WomenInTech #StartupFailure #Resilience #SaaS #TechPodcast #BRAVEsea

00:00 Opening hook

02:31 Early career to insurance

09:11 Growing Mercer in Asia

10:40 Leaving to build CXA

27:08 Why a brokerage model

36:38 The SaaS build decision

41:56 COVID and selling the company

45:30 Shame, letting go and reset

53:50 Why build again with AI

59:40 Value for brokers and insurers

1:04:00 A time she was brave