Mexico, divestments and emerging risks

Dia de los Muertos.
Mexico Insurtech Summit.
Wishing I had studied a little more Spanish at school.

Welcome to November.

Next week I’ve the honour of keynoting (🤷) at the Mexico Insurtech Summit. It’s a fantastic line up and I’m VERY much looking forward to the visit.

As it stands, we currently have a grand total of ONE client with their HQ in Mexico.

I’m keen to make a few new connections whilst in Mexico City and bring Sønr’s expertise to forward-thinking insurers across the region.

Hit me up if you’re local or know folk I should meet.

Right, let’s get into it. It’s an interesting time to be in the insurance space.

We’ve got new risks emerging.
We’ve got new technology proving itself.
And we have a world of incumbents looking to external vendors to accelerate activity and create new ways of doing business.

Couple all that with capital looking for a [sensible] home and it’s a good place to be.

Well, a good place if you’re a tech company which can make money.
A pretty bad place if you’re not. More on a few of those later 😬

Let’s get into it.

Health, life and LatAM

Keeping it on point, Prudential has announced a strategic partnership with 123Seguro across Latin America. First step is Mexico and Brazil – where less than 20% of the population has any form of life insurance.

Another LatAm announcement this week came from Osigu – a provider of AI-powered healthcare revenue cycle and claims management solutions.

These guys have raised $25m Series B funding which will go towards enhancing real-time payment solutions, easing the financial stress on healthcare providers with timely and accurate reimbursements. Nice.

Cars, insurance and embedded plays

Fast becoming table stakes in the auto space, we have a couple of embedded insurance plays this week.

Open Insurance has announced its partnership with CUPRA Australia. Not much to report on this other than what you’d imagine – a fully-integrated car insurance experience for CUPRA clients across Oz.

And similarly, Liberty Mutual and Jaguar Land Rover have partnered to offer exclusive auto insurance solutions to JLR owners in the US.

This partnership integrated Liberty Mutual’s insurance products into the vehicle purchasing process, featuring benefits such as OEM parts and streamlined repairs through JLR dealerships.

Last but not least, INSHUR – a global embedded provider for the on-demand economy, has raised $19m in its latest funding round.

As the in-demand economy gains momentum around the world, they’re on a mission to support the world’s biggest platform and insurance partners helping ensure insurance is fair and accessible for on-demand economy drivers. I like this.

Property tech + real life humans

I like both of these. It’s not always 100% tech that makes a good solution.

Inspectify, which concentrates on modernising the property inspection process, has raised $5.26m.

Their platform uses automated intelligence and real-time data to streamline property assessments. The output – accurate, efficient, and high quality inspections regardless of ‘human’ variability.

Next up is Homee – the property repair network…or should I now say AI-driven property repair network…has announced its Series C.

The guys connect carriers directly to a highly vetted direct repair network throughout the US. It’s a smart business. Not the easiest to scale but I like it.

It recently announced its fifth consecutive record financial quarter with revenue growth of 15%. It also shows off a few nice numbers on its website.

Divestments becoming a trend?

Last November, MassMutual said it’d be winding down Haven Life. It cited “lack of consumer adoption” and “high costs associated with customer acquisition.”

Earlier this year Prudential shuttered Assurance IQ and laid off most of the subsidiary’s roughly 1,000 employees.

And this week Baloise announced it’s selling its digital insurer FRIDAY to Allianz.

Baloise CEO, Michael Müller commented on the transaction:
“We no longer believe that we are the best owners to take the digital insurer forward. Economic conditions have changed the German and French markets for digital insurance which are highly competitive. Although FRIDAY has built up a high level of market recognition, we believe that there are too few opportunities for us to achieve profitable growth with FRIDAY in the current environment.”

It looks like Allianz will be taking on a total premium volume of around CHF 50 million, discontinuing FRIDAY’s operations and ending the FRIDAY brand.

I find this stuff fascinating. Running these digital brands poses a unique set of challenges and it’s not easy within such big established players. That is for sure.

UK, US and China

Right, let’s wrap this up.

A couple of announcements from the UK.

Great to see Aurora, a digital insurance platform based out of London, has secured Seed funding from QBE Ventures.

Aurora is known for its focus on digital commercial insurance solutions, leveraging algorithmic trading and AI to streamline workflows, improve risk assessment, and drive efficiency.

As part of the agreement, The Hartford is assuming a quota share of Coalition’s UK cyber program, in addition to its existing capacity partner relationships.

In the States, possibly my favourite new brand name – Milkshake, has been born out of a collaboration between Air Parametric, Guy Carpenter and Liberty Mutual Reinsurance.

It’s a new parametric insurance product designed to safeguard US dairy producers from heat stress on their livestock herds.

It leverages the Air Parametric’s advanced weather data, engineering, and ML capabilities to identify a customer’s weather triggers based on their location. Love it.

And finally, China is opening its massive insurance market by approving the establishment of separate insurance units for BNP Paribas and Prudential Financial. Let’s see what they can get up to over there.

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That is me done. Well, nearly.

Next week it’s Mexico. Let me know if you’re heading to MIS or are based out there.

The week after I’ll be heading to Zurich for the Swiss Insurtech Summit. Shout me if you’ll be about and fancy a coffee/beer/run.

Have a good weekend. Big love.

Matt

Make smarter decisions with AI-driven market intelligence.

Sønr helps (re)insurers around the world explore market trends, track competitor activity, and scout and assess best-in-class tech companies.

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