AI, embedded, Google and new clients

Hello.

So much for a quiet August.

From new Sønr clients (clue: one of the biggest brokers in the world…more on this next time 🚀 ) to new product launches, to planning the launch of the Forward50 Americas at ITC Vegas.

And all the while…our friends in mainland Europe are enjoying the beach.

M&A, US/UK collabs and mountain hot tubs

Let’s start with some M&A and randomly a founder I met in a hot tub whilst skiing in Beaver Creek 🤷

In a bid to enter the US market, London-based insurance software provider Acturis Group has acquired New York’s digital client engagement platform Broker Buddha.

Sounds like a good thing all round.

On the merger side of things, another US/UK coming together. Well, UK/US.

Sherpa and MyHealthMath have merged to form HYKE. Together, the two companies offer a truly global insurance decision-support platform providing consumers with help facing complex choices across medical, life and P&C insurance.

Last week telehealth scaleup Babylon’s proposed merger with Swiss healthtech MindMaze collapsed, pushing the struggling company towards bankruptcy.

Babylon had aimed to secure new funding and pay off debts through the deal. Now it plans to sell its UK business and exit the US market due to lack of financing commitments. Babylon’s Q1 2023 net losses surged to $63.2m, while revenues increased only by 17%.

It’s not quite the WeWork story but definitely another example of the market correcting for the better.

Planes, trains and automobiles. Kinda

From M&A to partnerships. One I clocked this week is Cytora teaming up with Jetnet to aid and improve decision-making across the aviation market. Niche but a big old opportunity.

Jetnet provides data on aircraft, fleets, and historical aviation information. The partnership will allow for the integration of Jetnet’s APIs into Cytora’s risk platform, providing real-time data for underwriting services.

Maybe less trains and more trucking and cars, Lula has raised $35.5m in a Series B.

Global embedded plays and a cyber connection  

There’s been so much GenAI chat recently, I’ve barely made the industry quota of mentioning embedded in every other sentence. Let’s change that up.

On the small business and micro-enterprise side of things, Canada’s Foxquilt has raised a $12m Series B.

The funding will be used to fuel its North American expansion plans and to scale its embedded enterprise capabilities. Still yet to hit profitability it’s targeting the end of the year for doing so.

Closer to home, Europe’s Hepster has raised a $10.9m Series B.

Again, for these guys it’s all about expanding into new markets and delivering sustainable growth. with the insurer aiming to integrate individual insurance solutions into the customer journey – a reflection of the insurance market’s increasing digitisation, simplification, and automation.

In Brazil, Nubank, the largest fintech bank in Latin America, has launched its home insurance product ‘Nubank Lar Seguro’ in partnership with Chubb.

The product will cover a variety of personalised features to cater for differing coverage requirements, providing a fully digitised experience for customers.

[As a quick aside, whilst talking LatAm, Argentina’s e-commerce giant MercadoLibre posted it now has 5 million insurance clients. Not bad huh?]

Back to embedded, and on the cyber front, AI-powered solutions platform, Mulberri, has announced the launch of its Cyber Insurance MGA.

Nice.

AI, parametric and Google enabling insurance

A random clustering of news. Forgive me.

A company I’ve talked a fair bit about in the past, is Israeli health tech company TytoCare.

It’s a business I have a lot of time for – providing families access to top healthcare through a variety of products and services. It’s just secured an additional $49m in growth funding to help explore AI in diagnostic support.

And one more sidenote, this one to do with AI.

Something I thought particularly interesting (and hugely important) – Cloverleaf Analytics, Exavalu and Socotra have launched an ‘Ethical AI in Insurance Consortium‘.

The Consortium aims to ‘foster responsible and transparent adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) for decision management in the insurance sector, bringing together insurance carriers, technology and solutions companies, regulators, and other key influencers’.

Love it. Now let’s get back on track with parametric.

Last week FloodFlash announced a partnership with Hiscox to accelerate US growth ambitions. Its products are now available across every state.

And finally, another great announcement from the folk at Google who continue to position themselves as a key enabler to the insurance industry.

They’ve teamed up with Unqork to make its platform available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.

This means customers can now easily access Unqork’s codeless platform to build and run mission-critical applications faster and at a lower cost.

Love it.

Before I wrap it up, two more Google related mentions.

The first is this – a playful run through their AI and GenAI models and gardens:

The Genasys ‘Tour de Insurtech 2023’ is going international this year with a New York Stage led by Google’s Nigel Walsh.

If you ride a bike, live in New York, get involved. It’ll be great fun.

Right, that’s me.

If you’d like to know more about Sønr and how we could help you connect with best-in-class investment, acquisition and partnership opportunities, please reach out.

Equally, if you’d like to know more about the Forward50 Americas – whether to join the launch event at ITC Vegas or to sponsor the report and its launch, hit me up.

For now, have a great weekend. I hope the sun is shining wherever in the world you are reading this from.

Matt

Sønr is the world-leading market intelligence platform created specifically for the insurance sector. It provides you with the knowledge and tools to stay relevant, compete and plan for the future.

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