Well, with Matt C off enjoying a well-earned break and heading up a mountain, this week’s SøNws is brought to you by me – Matt F.
And what a SøNws we have for you today. Let’s get started.
The four musketeers…
I feel like I’ve been banging on about this of late, but I genuinely love the ecosystem coming together. Problems are prioritised, wider perspectives considered, more effective plans put in place and focus (and energy) applied to solving them.
As a result, Thursday was a really (really) good day.
I headed into the Lloyd’s Lab, not for the usual Pitch Day, but for the official launch of the Innovative Market Services programme (IMS).
Not heard of it? Read on.
The concept is simple. Find a bunch of common pain points for the Lloyd’s Market, work with managing agents whose teams and customers struggle with them, identify best-in-class solutions to solve them and create a safe, low risk, low cost environment to test them out.
Not only that, but ensure the structures and support are in place to take validated business cases and sort the contracting and technical requirements to scale these services across the Market.
Sounds simple when you say it fast, but it’s a complex old business. So, who’s the intrepid bunch tackling this? Enter the Lloyd’s Lab, LMA, LIMOSS and the fourth musketeer… Sønr.
The event included a panel focussed on the first challenge to be tackled – claims notifications, featuring Dataminr and Beazley. Plot twist, it wasn’t just claims where the solution could be valuable…
Kudos to Rosie, Chloe and the Lloyd’s Lab crew, Seb, Zoe, Rose and Janine of LMA fame and James and Barry from LIMOSS for the vision and commitment. I’m really (really) excited for where this goes.
So, there’s a positive start, where to go next? 🤔
From Hartford with love.
It’s nearly that time of year again, with the Insurtech Harford Symposium kicking off on the 29th April in Connecticut. Once again it’s looking like a who’s-who of the insurance world – great job Stacy Brown.
What’s more, our very own Matt Connolly will be there too – so if you fancy a coffee, want to learn more about Sønr and/or love Hyrox, be sure to drop him a line.
Accelerating the future.
Speaking of bringing the brightest and best together, let’s chat about Pitch Day at the Lloyd’s Lab. Last week saw the runners and riders vying for a place in Cohort 14 doing their thing.
You know the drill by now – another stellar set of pitches, and the presence of John Neal no less opening proceedings and reflecting on the Lab’s recent award.
A big congrats as ever to everyone who made it through the selection process and was invited to pitch – an achievement in itself, and a massive congrats to those joining Cohort 14. Check them out here.
High tech. Big problem.
It already has a material impact on the bottom line, and it’s going to get worse.
No, it’s not (just) my bar tab from ITC, but the world of deep fakes.
AI-driven fraud is surging. The tech’s getting better, cheaper and the resulting impact bigger – the financial industry in the US alone got hit with more than $12bn of losses in 2023. That’s projected to hit $40bn by 2027.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we’re seeing a surge in interest in this emerging risk, although I’d argue that if the impact is north of $40bn then it’s pretty well ‘emerged’…
Either way, reflecting the global nature of the problem are a few startups that caught our eye – largely focussed on prevention rather than resolution:
Off to India first with Neural Defend – an early-stage startup developing a range of AI-powered detection tools for images, videos, and audio. It’ll be available via API (not a standalone application) and they aim to reach $10m in ARR within a year… aggressive? Certainly, but it’s a big market and they’ve got some interesting backers – check ‘em out.
Next up is a US-based Reality Defender. Their approach is to integrate their tech directly into communication points like call centre telephony systems, and as a plug-in to Microsoft Teams and Zoom. They’re one of 10 firms in a second cohort to receive support from the CyberBoost Catalyse programme in Singapore. Possibly a programme to track if you’re not already on it too.
Where to now? Polyguard! Last week saw the launch of the US-based startup, focussed on telephone-based scams and spoofing efforts. You’ll see a reassuringly familiar set of acronyms/terms associated with these solutions, but the founding team’s creds are what really caught our eye. A combination of serial entrepreneurism, (deep) tech expertise, successful exit to a global corporation, and a NASA badge… one to watch.
Next is a partnership between network security outfit, Accops and cyber security startup, pi-labs come together to tackle identity fraud. It will see Accop’s BioAuth (a facial authentication system) combined with pi-labs’ AI-powered deepfake detection technology (the Authentify engine) to provide real-time protection.
And, if four isn’t enough, then check out GetReal Security. They’re a bit further along their journey having been founded in 2015 and have closed a $17.5m Series A. Unsurprisingly they plan to enhance their product line including tools for screening media and a forensics platform that can run analysis on an as-a-service basis.
OK, what next?
Better together.
It’s great seeing founder’s businesses evolve and so was happy to see a couple of (what I think is) good news stories.
First up is acquisition news and one of the big boys has been shopping. Guidewire just announced their acquisition of Poland-based dynamic pricing platform, Quantee. I got to meet the Quantee crew about 18 months ago when they featured in our Forward50 Europe report, produced with our friends at ITC.
It was a super interesting business, got a load of attention during their presentation at the launch event and so it’s genuinely brilliant to see their businesses develop. Fingers crossed Mateusz is reading this from a yacht in the Med somewhere. Note to self: buy him a pint when I next see him… or ask him to buy me one?
Next is the new strategic partnership between Instanda and Benekiva, which will be good news for the L&H sector. The deal will see Instanda’s policy admin and digital distribution system, and Benekiva’s claims management solution help North American Life and Health insurers. The benefit? Accelerated product innovation and streamline claims processes, oh and a better experience for all in the process.
The march to better connected auto insurance products continues with news of Allianz partnering with Hyundai. Not uncommon news of course, although this one features UBI, which seems to have been a bit quiet. Either way they’re going to jointly develop data-driven insurance products and to determine the best strategies for building and positioning Usage Based Insurance (UBI) products.
A big old milestone.
I really enjoyed Daniel Schreiber’s keynote at ITI Europe the other week, and Lemonade was back in my newsfeed again. This time it was related to them joining the ‘tres commas club’ – hitting $1bn in premiums.
I won’t get into a macro/click-bait style critique at this point. We all know there’s an eye-watering amount of cash fuelling growth, but there’s some interesting improvements to their business performance (both YoY and QoQ) so let’s see where this goes. For now, this is a big old milestone and I think it’s worth celebrating the achievement (in 8.5 years).
“So, what are you seeing?”
I reckon this is the single most common question I hear from clients.
What’s the answer?
Given the breadth of our work (AI-driven pest control solutions for commercial property, anyone??) there’s often a pause while a. the neurons connect, power up and b. I try to figure out the latest correlation.
Fortunately you’re spared the pause and furrowed brow (vacant look?) but picking four (outside of deep fakes) I’d go with climate, carbon, health and consumer insights.
So, is there any action in the market? Oh yes.
We’d have to dedicate an entire SøNws (and more) to properly explore climate, but parametric has been hitting the headlines a lot of late.
In step (parametric) hurricane coverage provider Vortex Weather who has expanded its supplemental hurricane solutions to Hawaii. Then comes AIR Parametric who are expanding their heat stress insurance product, Milkshake, to offer broader financial protection for livestock operations. Finally, global climate risk solutions platform Arbol, was back in the headlines this week with news of a raft of new senior hires (including a former gold medalist in the International Mathematical Olympiad 🤷) to support AI, insurance, agriculture, and energy storage.
On the carbon-front also comes news of market stalwart, Kita who’ve secured a £22.5m boost to their underwriting capacity. I grabbed a seat at Chaucer’s partnership day pre-Xmas and Natalia Dorfman alluded to strong growth in 2025 – I suspect this won’t be the last announcement we hear.
Health news now and Venteur, a (er, health) startup has raised a pretty healthy $20m Series A. They’re in the employee benefits space, help companies provide personalised health insurance options to their employees.
Same theme, but super early we go and news from Arlo Health. They’ve raised a healthy (sorry) $4m Seed round as a provider of level-funded health plans for small and mid-sized businesses. Nice.
And rounding us out is news of consumer insights. Enter DeepTech, experial – a startup innovating market research through AI-powered simulations. They’ve closed a €2m Pre-Seed round, which will fuel the development of its AI-powered digital twins to help companies make market decisions quickly and accurately. Looks like they’re getting traction with some good brands, too.
With my old Customer Experience hat on I get a bit scared at this stuff as I’ve seen the value of doing crazy stuff like talking directly to real-life users of stuff to understand them and design stuff that’s better (and delivers commercial return). And yet, we all know the power of AI and direction of travel in the market. So, it’s an area that I’ve got a real interest in tracking.
OK, I think that’s quite enough for one Friday.
Thanks as ever for your attention, and of course feel free to drop me a line if any of these areas resonate and you need some help figuring it out.
Or, grab a beer – because it’s Friday and the sun’s out.
