Evolving mobility and a whole lot of travel.

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Hey everyone, it’s ‘the other Matt’ here, as your regular SøNws commentator (Matt C) heads off to watch international Spikeball in Belgium.

So, what can we talk about this week? Well, quite a bit as it happens, so let’s not mess around and get into it.
 

Around the world in 14 days

Well half-way and back again anyway. After a whole load of planning, hard work and caffeine, the Sønr team are hitting the road.

First stop is Las Vegas where we’ll be joining the good and the great at Insurtech Connect. And what an event it’s shaping up to be:

• Sønr providing this year’s compendium
• Co-running what’s set to be a brilliant event on Commercial Sustainability (hurry and get your ticket if you want to come along)
• Panel sessions with our friends from RGAX and Insurtech Australia
• Plus a whole lot more – come and say hi via any of the above or at booth 3376

From Vegas we’re flying straight on to Munich to attend DIA. We’ll be there with the team from Lloyd’s Europe but more on that later. Oh, and if you’re still considering registering then here’s a €200 discount code DIA200ALUMNI. You’re welcome. 

We plan on covering the other half of the globe in the coming months. But remember, if you’re wrestling with how you can better understand how your market is changing, want to understand who’s driving that change and figure out how to capitalise on the opportunities then don’t wait – we’re here to help!

OK, so time to run through what’s caught our eye in the news:

Improving mobility

It’s been a fascinating space to explore of late – both through research for our clients and in the media.
 
So, let’s start with EV’s. AXA’s crash test report was published a couple of weeks back, (and controversy aside) you’ll have seen some perhaps unsurprising results.

EVs can cause more damage and are more costly to repair in an accident than comparable ICE vehicles. That’s because they’re heavier and loaded with more sophisticated tech. They’re not involved in any more accidents, but the instant torque means that hard acceleration is a key risk factor. So, beware of that leaden right foot.

From EVs to commercial motor now and Zego continue their commercial fleet expansion. They’ve partnered with QBE who will be underwriting their behaviour-led fleet product, which uses telematics data to offer comprehensive risk profiles.  

It’s another big brand partnership for Zego following their recent announcement with Aviva too. Great to see them finding ways to bring mutual value to market.
 
Sticking with commercial fleet comes news of US-based Fairmatic’s $42m Series A. They’ve avoided the use of dash-cams and instead use a behaviour-based model to provide dynamic pricing and insights to their customers.
 
It’s a significant raise, not least in the current economic climate but there’s a potential $160B addressable (and currently highly fragmented) market to go after. Congrats to Jonathan Matus and the team.   

Moving from fleets to pelotons, news of a new embedded insurance partnership between Qover and bicycle manufacturer, Canyon. Insurance will be offered at point-of-purchase (and retrospectively for existing Canyon customers), with a raft of benefits covering theft, damage and even depreciation.

Given Canyon’s direct to consumer model (so lack of physical touchpoints), and the explosion in cycling’s popularity and therefore increasingly competitive market, it’s the sort of proposition that just makes sense. Easy to select, peace of mind, simple claims experience in case the worst happens – what’s not to like?  
 
I’m just wondering if I can square this with my partner as a good excuse for another bike… hmm.

Last but not least comes earlier-stage news from Australia. Insurance-by-the-KM provider, Koba launched last year and is already seeing its customer base grow 50% MoM.

Consumers pay a fixed premium when their vehicle is parked, and a per-KM rate when out and about, measured by telematics device KOBA rider. They’re currently halfway through a crowdfunding campaign, which will be used to build new insurance partnerships.

It may be early-stage, but there’s growing interest in these more flexible and personalised propositions in the motor space. And if you ever feel you need a hand with keeping abreast of this, or other trends, then just give us a shout.

Land of the giants

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks in the world of big tech/retail.

Amazon’s telehealth service Amazon Care is set to close by the end of this year, according to a leaked internal memo. It cited the offering was not ‘complete enough for the large enterprise customers [they] have been targeting’.

There was no mention of their other (expanding) healthcare initiatives, but rumours about the experimental nature of Amazon Care have been floating for a while so perhaps not a massive surprise. Although more fail fast-ish than fast perhaps?

On to retail now and big news for UK-based Healthily. They’ve landed a double-whammy for their AI-driven symptom checker with both a $20M raise and a partnership with Walmart.

With 30m users in the past 12 months, Healthily have been eyeing up US-expansion and Walmart’s footprint is a pretty big deal. For the retail giant it marks an ongoing growth of its health-related offering. Given their relatively lower funding compared to competitors like Ada and Babylon this feels like what can only be a very good move.
 
 

Cyber future

With the growing challenges of rising cyber risks, increasing costs and growing protection gap, cyber too has been a hot topic – both in terms of taking products to market and building resilience.
 
At the same time, the future of underwriting seems to have been a staple part of conversation lately.

With that backdrop comes news of a new partnership between digital risk processing platform, Cytora and cyber risk management technology provider, KYND. The partnership aims to help improve the accuracy and speed of data-driven assessments and decision-making for underwriters.

DIA

It’s at this point that we should circle back to the earlier mention DIA Munich. Amélie Breitburd, CEO of Lloyd’s Europe, will deliver a Keynote exploring the role that InsurTech – together with the global insurance industry – can play in addressing the global challenges around Cyber risk, Climate resilience, the protection gap in Europe and their strategic priorities to continue to mitigate against these and wider risks.
 

If you’d like to meet with Lloyd’s leadership, are focused on Cyber and Climate, or are interested in hearing more about being involved in the Lloyd’s Lab Accelerator? Then feel free to reach out to Garrick here to arrange a meeting at DIA.

What else?  

And a quick round up of some of the other exciting activity we’ve been following lately:

Lloyds Lab
It’s been brilliant working with the Lloyd’s team of late and last week saw the Cohort 9 pitch day. Amazing to see another crop of such talented startups and more to come.

Platforming
Ageas Group have announced the expansion of their relationship with eBaoTech as part of their Impact24 strategy. The PaaS business have been busy of late, with partnerships with Cognisure (handling unstructured text ingestion platform for P&C and health insurance) and Verisk (an insurance middleware platform).

Of course Ageas are not the only ones, but it’s great to see the value of the ecosystem approach in action. 
 
Carnival time
The LatAm market has been one to watch for some time, so it’s with interest we see such large investment in early-stage businesses. In step Brazil’s Latú Seguros, which is laying claim to the largest pre-Seed round in the LatAm market, at $6.7M.

Founded in 2020 and it offers business insurance, offering clients coverage of up to $10M, providing protection against lawsuits, cyber-attacks, property damages, compliance breaches and more. The funds will help the company to grow their engineering and cybersecurity teams and continue developing their core products.
 
Growing health
Let’s round out with a positive growth story amid many headlines around redundancy and share prices.

Germany-based health insurance provider Ottonova has raised €34m in Series F funding. The company, which offers private and supplementary health insurance, as well as software solutions for insurers, stated their primary focus is now shifting to efficiency from growth. Critically, they’re claiming this will be the last round of funding before they hit the magical break-even point. That’s very good news indeed.
 
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Right, that’s it. Time for the weekend to start and quite possibly an awkward conversation about a new bike.

Have a great weekend all and hopefully our paths will cross over the next two weeks?!

Matt (F)

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