Insurancemarket.ae's parent company bets on two new verticals

Alfred Holding, the parent company behind Insurancemarket.ae, has launched two new consumer platforms, Creditmarket.ae and Holidaymarket.ae. This marks the group's first major expansion beyond insurance in its 16-year history.

Speaking exclusively to Gulf News about the launches, Alfred Holding's Managing Director Ameet Lakhiani said the goal is to bring the same trust and simplicity the company built in insurance to lending and travel. "It really comes down to helping customers find the right product for themselves and being able to compare those products."

Creditmarket.ae will let users compare mortgages, personal loans and other credit products across multiple UAE banks in one place.

Taking the stage for Holidaymarket.ae was General Manager Rajesh Khare, who said that the new vertical aimed to solve all your travel and holiday queries — from staycations to documentations and visa appointments — all would be taken care of. “We have negotiated hard to get the best vendors on board, so that we can offer the best to our customers”.

According to Lakhiani, both ventures lean directly on lessons from Insurancemarket.ae. "Whatever we've learned from insurancemarket, we're replicating those same things with credit market and holiday market."  Whether it was customer acquisition, retention or trust-building, they plan on replicating their core playbook, even though the products themselves are very different.

Lakhiani said the simultaneous launch of both platforms was less strategic timing and more a matter of readiness. "We had multiple ideas, we do have a few more on the way," he said, explaining that Creditmarket.ae and Holidaymarket.ae simply reached maturity around the same time, with the right leadership in place for both. He hinted at further verticals still to come, without giving details.

Like Insurancemarket.ae before them, both new platforms are entirely self-funded. "One hundred percent bootstrapped," Lakhiani said, adding that the group remains focused on strong unit economics rather than raising external capital. Spending, he said, is concentrated on hiring the right talent and building the right technology, including AI.

On the AI front, Lakhiani said the company is already deploying it across customer-facing functions on both new platforms, including voice AI designed to feel as natural as speaking with a human agent. "You want to make it as human like as possible, so customers feel comfortable having conversation with voice AI at the back end," he said, adding that AI-guided journeys could eventually outperform human-led ones.

Given the UAE's tight regulatory environment around lending, Shadab Ahamed, the general Manager of Creditmarket.ae was quick to respond saying that  the company plans to stay compliant and “will not be taking personal details of customers and any given point. All credentials will be direct via the UAE pass, which is secure,” he added. 

Lakhiani pressed on the regulatory issue saying that “Creditmarket.ae operates purely as a distribution channel for bank products, banks themselves have very strict controls and compliance and governance surrounding everything that they sell” 

Insurancemarket.ae's own regulatory experience under the UAE Central Bank has also shaped internal practices across the group. "We've actually adopted a lot of the compliance and governance practices from insurance market and put that into both of these entities, which sometimes might even be more than what is even required," he said.

All three businesses will be tied together through the My Alfred app, which lets users view insurance policies, travel bookings and in-progress financial products in one place, alongside loyalty rewards. The app itself does not replicate full platform functionality; clicking through on a credit or travel product redirects users to the respective website.

For now, Alfred Holding's ambition is squarely on becoming, in Lakhiani's words, "the defacto name" in credit and travel, the same position insurance market has held in the UAE insurance space for over a decade.