BIG news, BIG visions and getting misty eyed.

Well, hello everyone! Happy Friday and welcome to the latest instalment of SøNws.

It’s the last before Christmas (sob), it’s Friday 13th (eek) and to top it all off it’s brought to you by me, Matt F (hooray?).

An early Christmas treat? Really unlucky? I’ll let you be the judge.

So, what’s been going out there in the world of insurtech? Well, from what I’ve seen with clients, and what we’ve read from an investment perspective it’s been a busy end to the year. Unsurprisingly, this is reflected in the headlines.

While I’d love to have an elegant metaphor or beautiful analogy, I’m going to keep it simple – the common theme is, BIG. Both from within insurance and adjacent to it, so let’s dive in.

All I want for Christmas is…

…A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR ACQUISITION.

We’ve seen news of not one, not two, but three big ol’ acquisitions.

First up is Nippon Life, with the $10.6b wholesale acquisition of Resolution Life. The relationship’s not a new one – Nippon having first invested in Resolution back in 2019 and remaining their largest investor. Shockingly, it’s a strategic play – supporting both Nippon’s objective to grow its international business and cementing Resolution’s market-leading position in Life and Annuities.

Closer to home comes news of Aviva’s successful bid to acquire Direct Line. After a rejected bid a few weeks ago, the pair agreed on a figure of $4.6b. OK, so the number’s obviously a big one (the biggest under Amanda Blanc’s stewardship), will see the creation of the largest home and motor insurer in the UK, and propel Aviva close to Prudential in terms of value. More interestingly, it marks another major milestone in the rationalisation of Aviva’s business. Let’s see what comes next!

Rounding out the big spenders comes news of Zurich’s $600m acquisition of AIG’s global personal travel business. Naturally it’ll see Zurich become a leading player in the travel market, under the shiny new Cover-More brand.

From growth, to er, not growth comes news of Wefox. The latest chapter sees the sale of Wefox Insurance AG in a bid to steady the ship now under the direction of former Allianz chief, Joachim Müller. Let’s see how it plays out.

From big fish to little(er) fish

Big news isn’t just confined to the big brands with a series of funding rounds for interesting super-early stage ventures.

If you’ve been keeping abreast of the investment news, it’s a part of the insurtech market that’s been pretty resilient, is pretty diverse and pretty attractive in terms of insurer’s dollars, so one to keep track of. If you need a hand with that then give us a shout 😉

Where to start? How about supporting underserved communities?

Anise is a US-based startup aiming to build the gold standard of culturally sensitive mental health care for the Asian community. The combo of therapy, coaching, community and self-guided tools are familiar territory for similar propositions, but it’ll all be in the nuance of execution. The market is big and the need is acute with Anise citing that people of colour are half as likely to receive effective mental health care.

From SMEs to Nat Cats now. Sola has announced a $3.7m round to fuel the growth of their affordable natural disaster cover and newly launched wind, hail and tornado products. Given the heady combo of increasing risks, rising prices and decreasing coverage options, it makes a lot of sense. The investor list is interesting too, with our friends at TMK involved along with Canopy Weather, Crawford & Company and Spinnaker amongst others.

Now, I nearly made it through this without uttering the letters A and I. Sorry, but I’ve held out as long as I can.

Rounding out the early-stage news comes a triple-whammy from AIMon, Wald.ai and RapidCanvas.

AIMon has raised $2.3m in a Pre-Seed funding round in their bid to combat AI hallucinations.

Wald.ai is focussed on enabling businesses to leverage AI models like ChatGPT, Claude and Llama to power secure virtual assistants. They’ve closed a $4m Seed round.

Like many players in this space they’re not focussed exclusively on the insurance market. But given the challenge of realising opportunity while managing (huge) risk in highly regulated markets this won’t be the last we’ve heard of these guys or others like them.

Now, if we can just pin down the regulatory framework, build all the in-house capability and, and, and, we can get on with deploying gen AI EVERYWHERE…

Big collaboration. Big numbers. Bright futures.

This time of year’s always fun with a mix of future planning and socialising.

Helping with both of these saw our friends at Chaucer bringing together the insurance community at their Innovation Breakfast meeting. With an intro to the team and overview of the role of innovation, it also featured presentations from partners, Kita, Armilla, Crown Jewel and Gaia.

Now if these names aren’t familiar to you, get in touch. They’re exciting businesses, solving big problems, led by great teams:

🌎 Kita – the carbon risk specialist – they’re growing. Watch this space it feels like the cusp of big(ger) things .
👶 Gaia – making IVF accessible – they’re scaling fast in the US where a single round of IVF treatment averages $30k (🤯)
✨ Armilla – the AI risk specialists – after launching their Warranty solution, there’s now a Liability product in the pipeline
👑 Crown Jewel – the trade secret insurer – unlocking a $35 trillion dollar asset class. Enough said.

On the subject of startup inspiration, from Chaucer we nipped across the street to see the Lloyd’s Lab demo day. Yesterday saw startups from Cohort 13 pitch to another full house.

From more than 215 applicants, to 10 startups across 3 themes, including, 1. Building resilience and supporting the transition in MEA, 2. Data, models and processes, and 3. New products. Click here for details of all involved.

As ever a great session and hats off to Rosie, Chloe and the rest of the Lloyd’s Lab team who make it look so easy.

Other (big) news

Before we wrap this one up, here’s a whistle-stop tour of other stories that caught our eye.

Anyone heard of Bolttech? Well, they’re at it again, this time partnering with Thailand Post to launch an embedded motor offering.

There’s been so much parametric news of late. FloodFlash joined the headlines after paying out a flood claim in just over 10 hours. Given the (terrifying) stats around the impact of business interruption to SMEs I’m sure we’ll see more in future.

Last week saw news of Insurtech UK members Aviva and Haast partnering in a new pilot. Haast’s AI system helps automate marketing compliance and will see Aviva testing how it can protect its brand while allowing legal, compliance, and marketing teams to focus on more strategic tasks. I love seeing this insurance ecosystem in action.

Big love.

Ok, I’ll try and avoid using the word ‘blessed’, but amongst all this (relatively) objective analysis and commentary we can overlook the fact that it’s powered by a **** tonne of hard work, risk, and possibly a few tears.

It’s an amazing community and one that I love being a part of. From our insurtech association friends, event collaborators, partners at ITC, pals at ITI, awesome startup buddies, accelerator mates, VC chums and of course all of our insurance family clients, a massive thanks for being brilliant.

And 2025 is of course set to start at pace. We have the new ITC London in January, swiftly followed by ITC Japan and ITI Europe in March and a whole load of Sønr plans afoot. We’ll be at all, and we don’t need much excuse to grab a coffee or a beer. Or two. So please get in touch.

OK, that’s it.

All that’s left to do is wish you all a great festive break. And please keep your fingers crossed that Father Christmas delivers the ever-elusive negative swing in my BMI come the New Year.

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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