October 06, 2021
Insuretech Connect is the annual rendez-vous for insurers and insurtech startups that are looking to design the future of the insurance industry and BNP Paribas Cardif was present this year with its American correspondent BNP Paribas C.Lab Americas. The event is taking place every year in Las Vegas around October and this 2021 edition is in person with 5,000 registered participants.
New investments and startups are booming and are the sign of the insurtech wave expansion
Startup investors and entrepreneurs are staying very busy in 2021 with many new insurtech startups accelerating their growth around the world: just during the 1st semester of 2021, insurtech startups raised $6.6 billion across 293 deals, it is as big as the entire 2020 year with $6.6 billion VC investments across 451 deals. Following the success of leading insurtech players in the USA like Gusto, Oscar, Lemonade or Next insurance, new players are scaling fast and developing in new areas of the insurance world. Just in the last few days, Ladder in the term life insurance domain announced a series D at a $900M valuation, CoverGenius from Australia in the embedded insurance world raised $75 million at a $750 million valuation and Stable raised $46.5 million to help their corporate clients to better protect themselves against volatile commodities price.
API, AI and technology enablers are present all over the board
Incumbents are looking for innovation and one way to make it happening is considering new partnership model with insurtech players and neo-distributors. Following what happens in other industries like Stripe for payment or Twilio for SMS regarding API and micro-services technologies, the insurance vendors are changing and enabling insurance carriers to build this new operating model with modern technologies like a lego construction according to Dan Woods, CEO of Socotra. What is at stake is great user experience on the consumer side: “customers don’t care how insurance product is assembled and what is going on in the background, they just want a great solution and enjoying riding the car” according to Alexander Tsetsenekos who is the former head of insurance at Tesla.
Open legacy which is part of BNP Paribas Cardif C.Entrepreneurs family was also present at the event and shared with us that it was an important time for them to do more business. All insurance carriers and incumbents are realizing in this post-covid era the importance of catching up with modern technologies and building better digital customer experience which is great as Open Legacy can help them bridge the gap with their legacy system building API to connect them to these new environments.
Climate change risk and adaptation is becoming a growing area of focus
Climate change is a growing issue across the world and is identified as the top risk concern for professionals and the general public according to a recent global survey published in September 2021. The adaptation an mitigation of natural catastrophes are a major concern for many countries and solutions are emerging like Harbor for disaster preparation or JumpStart which is doing parametric insurance for seismic insurance. Jumpstart allows consumers to have a parametric mechanism that allows them to provide a set payout amount based on the quake intensity rather than the cost of damage in an automated way. Jumpstart just announced their acquisition during InsureTech Connect by the insurtech Neptune Flood insurance which is specialized in private flood market insurance using artificial intelligence to make it easy for consumers and agents to buy and sell insurance.
Stay tune for new developments and news on the insurance world evolution and see you next year InsureTech Connect!