If you’ve ever tried to get a car insurance quote in South Africa, you’d know exactly how it goes. You fill in your details on a comparison website, and before you know it, your phone will not stop ringing from consultants trying to close a deal. It’s quite frustrating. That is the experience that the Naked Insurance set out to destroy when it was launched back in 2018 , and now, in 2026, the Johannesburg-based insurtech has just done something that no other insurance company in the entire world has ever done before.
Naked has become the first company globally to build and launch a native app inside ChatGPT that gives you a real, final, binding car insurance quote,without ever leaving the chat. No follow-up call. No separate quoting system. No Charl from the call centre. Just a real answer, right there in the conversation.
The difference between what Naked has done and what most other insurers have attempted with AI is massive. A lot of so-called “AI insurance tools” are really just fancy lead generation forms. You type in your details, get a rough number, and then the insurer’s sales team takes over. What Naked has built is completely different. Their ChatGPT app connects directly to the same live underwriting and rating engine that runs their website and mobile app. That means the number you see inside ChatGPT is not a ballpark figure , it is the actual premium you would pay. It is final. It is binding. And you get it in the same chat window where you were already having a conversation.
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The app is also incredibly easy to use. You open ChatGPT, go to the app directory in Settings, search for “Naked,” connect your account, and you are ready to go. From there, you can just type something like “I want to get a quote for my 2021 Polo Vivo” and the conversation takes it from there. What makes it even better is that you do not have to follow a strict list of questions in a specific order. You can answer in your own words, in your own way, and the app figures it out. You can also adjust things like your excess while you are viewing the quote and see immediately how that affects your monthly premium. It feels less like filling in a form and more like talking to someone who actually knows what they are doing because the AI behind it really does.
It is also worth knowing that this is the first native ChatGPT app ever launched by a South African company. OpenAI only opened its app development toolkit to outside developers in late 2025, which means this entire space is still brand new. Naked moved fast and got there first. Alex Thomson, co-founder of Naked Insurance, put it plainly when he said the company is not sitting around waiting for AI to go mainstream. They are building now so that when customers are ready, the technology is already there for them.
For now, the app covers car insurance only, both comprehensive cover and third-party only. Naked’s website and mobile app are still the quickest and easiest way to buy cover, update a policy, or submit a claim. The ChatGPT app is not trying to replace those. It is about showing where things are going and making sure Naked is already there when the world catches up.
There is a bigger picture here too. What Naked has done is an early signal of how financial services could work in the future. Right now, you go to a bank’s website to check your account. You open an insurer’s app to see your policy. You compare quotes by visiting three or four different websites. But imagine a future where you just ask your AI assistant to handle all of that for you compare quotes across insurers, track your renewal dates, flag when your cover needs updating, explain the fine print in plain English. Naked’s co-founder has already spoken about this vision, and this ChatGPT app is a real step toward making it happen.
Of course, not everyone is ready to hand over financial decisions to an AI chat interface, and that is fair. There are serious questions about regulation too. South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority has rules around financial advice and intermediation, and it is not yet clear exactly how those rules apply when a binding quote for a financial product comes through a third-party AI platform. These are questions the industry will have to answer as this technology becomes more common. But what Naked has shown is that the technology itself works well.
The company has also been transparent about what this is and what it is not. It is an exploratory move. It is a statement of intent. It is Naked saying out loud that they believe AI assistants will become one of the main ways people interact with their financial products, and that they want to be the brand that is already comfortable in that space when the shift arrives.
Naked Insurance has always been the unusual one in South African insurance, no call centres, no pushy consultants, fully digital from day one, and a business model that donates unclaimed premium surplus to causes chosen by customers. They have raised significant funding over the years, most recently completing a $38 million Series B extension in early 2025. They have been building toward something bigger than just a cheaper car insurance quote, and this ChatGPT integration is one more piece of that picture falling into place.
Getting a car insurance quote in South Africa used to mean bracing yourself for a week of unwanted calls. With Naked’s new ChatGPT app, it now means typing a sentence and getting a real answer in seconds. That is a genuine change, and the fact that it is a South African company leading the world on this should not be overlooked.
