In 2009, a 22-year-old Berliner was selling chocolate. Julian Teicke, born in Berlin in October 1986, had helped start the UK branch of Chocri, a Berlin company where customers designed their own bars. Nothing about it suggested insurance. It suggested a young man who liked building a market from nothing.
He had studied at the University of St. Gallen, and after Chocri he joined Groupon, where he headed European sales. In 2010 he moved to Switzerland to join DeinDeal, an e-commerce deals platform, and became its COO. Ringier bought it in 2015. He won the Swiss e-commerce award in 2013 and 2014. By then he had learned the pattern: find a clumsy industry, put a screen in front of it, and grow faster than the people who have been doing it for decades.
What almost nobody noticed in the glow of that growth was how much it cost to be both a broker and an insurer.
The clumsy industry he picked was insurance. In 2015 he founded FinanceFox with Dario Fazlic and Fabian Wesemann, an app that let customers see all their policies in one place. Within two years it reported more than 100,000 customers. Once it won permission to sell insurance products it rebranded as wefox in 2017, and in 2018 it launched its own carrier under the One brand.
What almost nobody noticed in the glow of that growth was how much it cost to be both a broker and an insurer. Wefox passed a €1 billion valuation in 2019. In June 2021 it raised $650 million at $3 billion, led by Target Global. A $400 million round in 2022 pushed it to $4.5 billion. It bought insurers and brokers across Europe, and critics said the acquired firms never fully adopted its technology.
Then the arithmetic turned. The group reportedly lost €125 million in 2022 and €141 million in 2023. Teicke stepped down as CEO in March 2024 after nine years. A bid from Mubadala, valuing the group at around €550 million, was turned down. A 2024 round valued wefox at about €500 million, roughly 90% below the peak. It withdrew from the German market, sold Assona to Ecclesia and, in December 2024, its Liechtenstein insurer. In July 2025 it raised €151 million after restructuring, and by March 2026 it was preparing a €15 million convertible emergency loan.
Teicke later took a non-executive role and sits on the board of the Jewish Museum Berlin. His story carries a warning for a generation of founders who learned from chocolate and coupons that growth is the product. In insurance, growth is a liability until the losses are priced.