There’s a definite keener eye on what good looks like.
A mix of a maturing market coupled with a tanking economy?
If you’re scouting for new opportunities or want a better sense of where the market’s heading, have a read.
And if you’d like one of our analysts to go deeper on how it maps to your business or simply chat innovation strategy/activity more broadly, drop us a line.
On that note I was back in Munich last week.
This time with the Allianz crew for their Tech4Leaders programme where I ran through all things innovation – key competitor activity/playbooks, the mix of routes playing out in the market, and how to optimise insurtech partnerships.
Top job to our friends at Elixirr for bringing such a senior group together.
And for two days of great content/sessions.
Also, my #1 tip for any seriously jetlagged Munich airport visitors – the Napcabs are heavenly.
Let’s get in to some market news.
Jam. Jelly. Biscuit. Cookie.
A couple of announcements last week of UK insurtechs stepping into the US.
YuLife, which has recently brought in a whole chunk of new capital, has announced its ambitions to partner with leading insurance companies over there.
And in the world of pet insurance, ManyPets completed its acquisition of Digital Edge to accelerate its US roll out.
I’m a big fan of both these companies and can’t wait to see the traction over the coming months.
On a somewhat related note, I clocked this LinkedIn post from Adam Rostom, Many Pet’s CMO.
If you haven’t come across OLIO, they’re one of my all-time favourites. I’m allowed non-insurtech favourites, right?
They started out in 2015, in the UK with the ambition of reducing food waste at a community level and now do tonnes of great stuff…
To date they’ve had 6m+ app downloads, have had 65m+ portions of food shared, and all this across 62 countries.
Love it.
A round of a-paws to Chewy and Fursure
Back to the US and pet specialist Chewy has teamed up with Lemonade to expand its suite of insurance and wellness offerings.
Chewy customers will now be able to access customised plans, tele-vet (is that a word?) services and connect into their pet pharmacy ‘Chewy Pharmacy’.
And whilst we’re on cute names, Fursure (see what they’ve done there?) has closed a $3m Seed+ round. Launched in 2020 they’ve had some good traction with 60,000 ‘pet parents’ 🤦 coming through the doors.
Mobility shifting towards greener futures
Keeping with the US a little longer and Toyota’s branded insurance product, Toyota Auto Insurance, is now available for customers in Texas.
Super interesting seeing this one play out.
It was first introduced to select markets in 2021 and the expansion to Texas marks a major milestone as its North American HQ.
Heading south it was good to see Swiss Re entering into a Latam partnership with Jooycar (one of our Future50 Americas startups) to focus on small and medium-sized commercial fleet telematics.
Closer to home, French startup Neat has raised $9.9m.
Neat was launched in 2022 and offers B2B2C travel and mobility insurance. Neat says it provides retailers with ‘the next generation embedded insurance’.
Neat’s mission is to promote a more sustainable consumption.
And in the UK, LV has launched ElectriX, ‘a one-stop shop offering drivers everything they need to get on the road with an electric car’.
Electrix enables customers to lease their own vehicle, buy a home charger and also obtain car insurance. Nice. When Rivian sort themselves out and launch in the UK, I’ll definitely look into it further.
“Traveler, there are no paths. Paths are made by walking”
I’ve always loved this aboriginal proverb and it’s kinda fitting for this section.
As the northern hemisphere settles into a season of Sunday roasts and roaring fires, it’s seemingly all go Down Under.
On the incumbent side, it’s great to see the venture arm of Australian insurer QBE investing into US-head officed Geosite.
Geosite’s platform sources, visualises and then analyses relevant geospatial data to help customers make better-informed decisions when underwriting. And respond to claims more quickly.
If you’re interested in this space (excuse the pun), there’s a great write by Alex Taylor, Global Head of Emerging Technology, on ‘Why we invested into Geosite’.
On the startups side, #38 in our Insurtech 100, Cover Genius has secured $70m of fresh funding in a Series D.
Cover Genius was founded in 2014 and it provides embedded insurance solutions, now available in 60 countries.
The new cash will help the company expand its distribution platform and support new partners from e-commerce, property, travel, mobility and auto sectors.
On the partnership front, well kinda, Australian startup Invuite has been added to our much beloved client Hannover Re’s Equarium innovation platform.
Invuite was launched in 2016 and it helps insurers collect and manage sensitive information requests as part of the underwriting and claims process.
Total investment down. Early stage funding up
A super interesting time in the market and kick of the financing chat great to see Kin Insurance closing a $145m debt round.
Kin was founded in 2016 and it provides home insurance, specialising in homes impacted by floods, fires, hurricanes, and other climate change affects.
Co-incidentally Kin was one of the insurtechs pitching in last night’s Insurtech and Insurer Innovation Awards. It was a great pitch by Adam Sturt and there’s so much good stuff going on in their business right now. Definitely one to keep tracking.
Also, thanks to The Digital Insurer for the invite to be a judge. As always, it was super insightful and great fun.
Another investment worth sharing is Israel-based Vesttoo which closed an $80m Series C. This brings the company’s valuation to a unicorn-level of $1bn.
Vesttoo was launched in 2018 and it is the world’s first marketplace for Life and P&C insurance-based risk transfer and investments.
The company’s core product is called Digital Coworker and leverages AI and machine learning to improve insurance operations and operational efficiency. It’s a big ol’ $100bn market to play for so I wish them luck.
The investment will help accelerate the ongoing development of Moneyhub’s solutions – pensions and wealth, payments, distribution, affordability, and Data-as-a-Service.
Nice. Congrats to L&G and all involved in that one.
Talent wins games. Teamwork wins championships
Who doesn’t love a slightly bastardised Michael Jordan quote to wrap things up?
A couple of partnerships definitely worth a share.
Just this morning I caught Chaucer Group is working with K2 Parametric to bring bespoke parametric weather solutions to the market.
And secondly, if you’re interested in the Metaverse or in fact, not interested in the Metaverse, you should subscribe to this.
It’s a newsletter written by Em Colonnella and expertly brings together a vast amount of activity from in and around the FS world. Better still, it has some great opinion woven into it. Good work Em.
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