DutyAdvisor: Turning the Duty of Advice into Growth

Stéphane Margand and Philippe Greco transformed regulatory constraints into a SaaS growth engine for insurance intermediaries.

Founded in February 2025 by Stéphane Margand, a seasoned insurance entrepreneur, and Philippe Greco, Marketing expert and HEC Paris lecturer and HEC Paris Lecturer, DutyAdvisor is a SaaS platform designed for insurance intermediaries (agents and brokers). Born from a master’s thesis at HEC Paris and developed with the support of the HEC ecosystem, the startup structures the regulatory “duty of advice” and turns it into a lever for commercial growth.

Launched with self-funding and validated on the French market within months, DutyAdvisor centralizes client data, enhances advisory interactions, and helps intermediaries increase both productivity and revenue, while ensuring regulatory compliance.

The Problem

Insurance intermediaries operate in a fragmented environment:

• Dispersed and heterogeneous data
• Multiple CRMs, document management systems, and paper notes
• A contract-centric logic rather than a client-centric view
• Regulatory pressure to demonstrate proper duty of advice

In practice, intermediaries often lack a global view of their clients (personal, professional, family). As a result, they miss commercial opportunities and spend significant time searching for information.

“When you enter an insurance agency, you’re not a contract number. You’re a person — with a family, a professional life, responsibilities. But most systems are built around contracts, not around people.”

The consequence? On average, clients hold five insurance contracts (eight for professionals), but intermediaries manage only two. The rest goes to competitors.

The Solution

DutyAdvisor is a SaaS platform that structures advisory conversations and centralizes all relevant client data into a single interface.

It provides:

• A 360° “Augmented Client” view (personal, professional, household)
• Centralization of contracts, risks, needs and interaction history
• Assisted data entry during appointments (face-to-face, phone, video, email)
• Automatic generation of compliant advisory reports
• Risk mapping across 42 insurance categories (20 personal, 22 professional)

The platform synchronizes with existing “contract CRMs” while adding an intelligence layer focused on advisory quality and multi-equipment opportunities.

One key feature is the automatic generation of a clear and intelligible summary after each interaction, reinforcing trust and traceability.

The result: better client relationships, structured compliance, and measurable business impact.

Key Figures

• Team: 5 people
• About 25 paying clients within the first year
• +25% commercial opportunities detected
• 30% time saved searching for client information
• Estimated European market: >€1.5 billion
• Target: €100M ARR within 5 years (France + Europe)

For a representative agency (3,500 clients, 4 collaborators), DutyAdvisor becomes profitable from 30 additional contracts per year and can generate a x22 ROI over five years.

How They Did It

DutyAdvisor is the result of an unlikely but complementary partnership.

Philippe Greco, a marketing expert, entrepreneur and long-time HEC Paris lecturer, spent decades in business development and consulting before launching the venture. Stéphane Margand, with 30 years of experience in insurance and head of several general agencies, returned to HEC Paris to complete an Executive Master’s degree — where his thesis explored whether the regulatory duty of advice could become a business opportunity.

The startup was born from that question.

“We told ourselves: let’s give it six months. Either there is a market, or it is just a good idea in an HEC thesis.” — Philippe Greco

Within weeks of presenting a simple three-slide deck, prospects were asking: “How much does it cost?” The founders initially planned to test it for free. Instead, clients insisted on paying, an early validation of product-market fit.

Their approach combined:

• Deep field knowledge of insurance distribution
• Strong B2B marketing expertise
• Rapid iteration and client testing
• Direct commercial validation before fundraising

Today, DutyAdvisor facilitates intermediaries’ lives by improving the quality of interactions, increasing sales, and structuring their duty of advice.

What’s Next?

Having validated traction in France, DutyAdvisor aims to accelerate commercial deployment and expand across Europe, where regulatory frameworks and intermediary structures are comparable.

The startup targets a clearly defined core market of 12,500 general agents and 19,000 brokers in France, within a broader pool of 80,000 insurance intermediaries nationwide and approximately 500,000 across Europe.

Financially, the ambition is significant, with a target of reaching 10% market share in France within three years, representing around €20 million in ARR, growing to 15% within five years, or approximately €30 million in ARR, and ultimately achieving €100 million in annual recurring revenue across Europe, including adjacent services. 

The company is currently raising €500,000–€600,000, primarily from its own clients, more than half of whom have expressed interest in investing.

Its ambition is clear: becoming the reference SaaS platform that turns compliance into competitive advantage, and build a European leader in advisory-driven insurance distribution.