Travelers Insurance has a history of going after companies with umbrellas in their logo

The Singaporean insurance startup, PolicyPal, is set to change its logo after the American insurance giant Travelers issued two legal notices requesting them to withdraw their intellectual property application and change their logo.

Citing the lack of resources to push back against Travelers, PolicyPal will acquiesce to the demands.

“We asked advice from our lawyers, and also our mentors and even though we wish we could keep the logo, we will have to change it,” said Val Jishuan Yap, the PolicyPal Founder and CEO in an interview with e27.

“It is a waste because we spent time to build brand awareness and people recognise us and now we have to change it…We are quite tired on our end but we don’t have the resources to actually fight with a big insurance company,” she said.

PolicyPal has had the brand for over a year now and Yap said she was disappointed that the company needs to restart the brand awareness process.

“We don’t think its similar at all. Think of a circle, there are so many logos with circles. It’s just an umbrella, it’s nothing. But we did more research online and they’ve been doing this for decades,” said Yap.

Travelers Insurance declined to comment for this article.

A history of aggressive brand protection

Travelers has a history of threatening lawsuits against companies with umbrellas in their logo. Some of the companies fight back, others acquiesce.

In February, Financial Times reported that Travelers is embroiled in a legal spat with a British tech company called Brolly because, they claimed, the logo looked like an umbrella without a handle. On their website, Brolly said, “Ours is more like a blushing jellyfish.” They conceded rather than fight the legal battle.

Also Read: Singapore’s PolicyPal joins MAS FinTech Regulatory Sandbox, grabs funding from 500 Startups

In 2015, the company made national headlines in the US for going after a small HR consultancy firm named HR Umbrella in Anchorage, Alaska. The two sides came to an agreement as long as HR Umbrella doesn’t use a red umbrella in its logo.

In 2013, Travelers sued a British insurance firm named Legal & General (a market leader in the UK), over the umbrella in their logo. L&G still has the umbrella displayed prominently.

Just to give an idea. Below is a picture of the PolicyPal logo in question.

And here is the Travelers umbrella.

Travelers first began using the logo in 1960.

Silver lining

PolicyPal is trying to make the best of a bad situation by crowdsourcing their next logo.

“We want to get the public to submit the logo to us, and bring the power back to the users,” said Yap.

To incentivise the competition, the winner will receive S$500 (US$366) worth of Grab credits.

For more information, or to submit a logo, click here.

Also Read: Homecare24, Indonesia’s answer to on-demand caregiving platform Homage and Caredo

PolicyPal is a cloud-based platform for corporations and individuals to manage insurance tasks such as employee benefits and claims.

The company was also the first company to enter the regulatory sandbox of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

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Correction: An earlier version of this article said the winner will receive S$200 worth of Grab credits. It is S$500. 

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