Building the GCC's first embedded insurance platform

In Saudi Arabia, most insurance still happens offline.

Masoud Alhelou, who once grew Expedia’s travel-insurance arm from scratch, set out to change that with Yasmina, an API that lets platforms like Jisr and Syarah bundle coverage directly into checkout flows.

The startup just raised $2 million (Scene Holding, Access Bridge, Arzan VC, Sanabil/500 MENA) and will enter the UAE this year, Egypt in 2026. Yasmina claims partners can go live in under 48 hours and, within five years, hopes to become the region’s first fully digital insurer.

I had the chance to sit down with Masoud a couple of weeks back. We unpacked Yasmina’s regulatory moat, their zero-CAC distribution playbook, and why embedded insurance may be MENA’s next big fintech unlock.

Masoud, I’d love to hear more about what brought you to the embedded insurance opportunity, how you’re approaching things especially in a Saudi context, and whether you’ve drawn any lessons from global players like Cover Genius or Lemonade?

I used to work at Expedia, where I was the Product Director for travel insurance. When I started, the insurance vertical was generating zero revenue.

That journey exposed me to different startups and ideas in the insurance space. It was during that time that I came across companies like Lemonade and Cover Genius. I thought: if we could build something similar to Lemonade in the region, that would be incredible. That’s where the idea really began.

I eventually left Expedia, still thinking about this concept, and joined Maersk in Copenhagen. I didn’t stay there long, maybe two years, but during that time, I was actively looking for the right partner in Saudi Arabia. That’s when I met Bashar.

Bashar is ex–Saudi Central Bank. He was actually one of the original people who helped establish the insurance sector in Saudi. Like, literally twenty years ago, there was no real insurance framework, and a minister said to him, “Bashar, let’s create it. Let’s write the law.” So he helped shape the entire system from scratch.

After that, he went on to lead an insurance company as CEO. And he, too, had been thinking about how to digitise the entire insurance experience. When we met, completely by chance, and started talking, he said, “You know what? This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about.”

So we decided to start something together. That’s actually why we called it Yasmina. We didn’t want to name it something generic like ‘Shield Corporation International.’ We wanted to create something human, like a friendly person who reminds you, “Hey Jamie, you just bought a house. You should insure it. Protect your investment.” That’s where the name came from: Yasmina. It’s easy to pronounce in Arabic and across other languages too.