Metaverse vs Quantum Computing vs Gen AI
Last week I caught an event the Generali guys were hosting with FinTech Global.
Billed as the ‘Battle of the Tech’ it was a star-studded panel sharing some great use insights and use cases for the various tech across insurance.
My key takeaways:
Gen AI wins
Everyone’s talking Metaverse; I’m still seeing Second Life
Romeo, from Moody’s (who is out of shot…sorry!), is marrying a person called Juliette. Brilliant. You can’t write this stuff
Keeping with Gen AI and Coalition has launched Copilot – a solution to better counter cyber attacks on brokers. The chatbot can answer questions about cybersecurity best practices, cyber policy coverage options, and more.
Nice.
Similarly, India’s Plum has launched PolicyGPT, a chatbot that helps users understand their health insurance policies in a conversational, user-friendly way.
Digging in a little further, PolicyGPT, which is still evolving in real-time, will soon offer voice recognition, policy advising, text translation into regional languages, and data analysis for insights, patterns, trends, and anomalies.
Startup partnerships accelerating incumbent transformation
One of the most valued data streams available on the Sønr platform is who is partnering with who.
Whether it’s to accelerate transformation or great new growth opportunities, Open Innovation has become the #1 route for many.
I’ve got to know the Benekiva crew pretty well over the past couple of years and am super pleased to see this relationship come to life.
The new platform will support digital claims intake, holistic workflow, correspondence, and document management, claims risk scoring, and triaging. And have built-in pay-out and audit capabilities. Super smart.
Benekiva have cited insurers can reduce their claims cycle and processing times by up to 75%. Definitely one to check out.
Back on the cyber front and Aviva has partnered with cyber risk analytics company CyberCube.
The Aviva underwriting team will use CyberCube’s Account Manager solution – providing insights to help make their underwriting process more efficient and profitable. Plus CyberCube will help Aviva expand its cyber book.
Whilst chatting Aviva, great to see it’s added a further £150m to Aviva Ventures, its corporate venture capital fund. And that’s it’s already invested £1.5m into Scan.com, a company that helps people to book diagnostic scans.
And finally, UK insurer, NFU Mutual has partnered with FRISS to automate ‘trust’ throughout their policy and claim lifecycle.
FRISS’s solutions are super smart – analysing tonnes of data to identify fraudulent patterns and potential risks in real-time.
And with that comes a host of good stuff – efficiency, accuracy, lower costs, reduced fraud, better CX etc.
Smart tech and auto innovation
I always love a good Wakam partnership.
This week they’ve teamed up with French driving school marketplace Ornikar to launch a new insurance product.
Ornikar offers online driver education courses and matches students with independent driving instructors. And, with the help of our friends, is now offering car insurance designed for young drivers that take into account a student’s profile.
Over 400,000 young people each year subscribe to at least one of its services. Ornikar looks to sell 100k policies in the next 24 months.
Keeping with auto and Arity, a mobile and data analytics company, has partnered with Connected Analytic Services (a Toyota affiliate) to provide driving data from connected vehicles to auto insurance carriers on behalf of vehicle owners.
It’s a slow build, but over the coming years, I think we’ll see some genuinely interesting and differentiated innovation in this space. The data’s accruing, and the tech is getting continuously smarter.
Last but not least, Brazil-based car insurer, Justos, has raised an early $5.5m
Talking of smart tech, Justos uses machine learning to create models that can predict claims and, as a result, charges a personalised premium for each driver. Premiums are paid on a monthly payment basis and are based on the insured’s driving during the month.
Life and wealth
The third-largest mutual insurance company in France, Apicil, has acquired 90% equity in fintech startup Nalo.
Why this is interesting is Nalo offers a robo-advisory service that allows people to save for retirement and certain life projects, as well as insurance through Generali.
And from the UK, life insurtech YuLife has introduced its services to South Africa.
The international expansion of the UK-based company follows a similar growth into the United States.
YuLife SA’s policies will be underwritten by Guardrisk Life, the largest life cell captive insurer in tailored risk solutions. South Africa is attractive to the company because it has the second-highest insurance penetration globally.
Property AI, DeFI, ESG, and marketplaces
A random collection of other news.
Kicking off with property risk intelligence company, Betterview.
These guys have launched new products using AI and computer vision to determine the age of a roof. Niche and nice.
Apparently (hey, I’m learning as I go here), inaccurate roof age leads to over $1bn in premium leakage every year.
Nayms – a smart contract platform for the placement, trade, reporting, and settlement of insurance risk has closed its private token sale. It takes a while to get your head around these guys, but it’s worth it. They’ve a super interesting proposition.
Carbon removal company Noya has raised $11m in its Series A.
The new money will be used to expand the staff, conduct more testing, improve manufacturing capabilities, and later this year deploy its first commercial pilot.
And finally, digital insurance marketplace Capitola has announced its Series A round worth $15.6m and led by Munich Re Ventures.
The money has been slated to grow Capitola’s platform and accelerate sales in the US.
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Right, that’s me.
Drop me a line if you’d like to chat any of the above through.
Check out Sønr if you’d like to learn more about how we can help accelerate your business transformation or growth.
And if neither of those, simply have a great weekend.
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