This week it’s the ‘finfluencers’ – social media personalities using flashy cars, designer clothes and exotic holidays to push high-risk forex and CFD products to their followers – that have been in the FCA’s crosshairs.
The FCA also called out social media platforms directly stating they’re not doing enough to stop illegal promotions at source. This is a good thing.
The world is repricing
The Strait of Hormuz has become one of the biggest stress tests marine underwriting has faced in years. And it’s not done yet.
Effectively shut since late February after US and Israeli strikes on Iran, the partial reopening hasn’t settled much. Howden Re said it well – this isn’t just a marine war risk story. Energy, aviation, trade credit, the wider macro. All of it in flux.
War risk pricing spiked. Coverage moved to voyage-by-voyage. Premiums that jumped 50% are sticking.
And then there’s Somalia.
At least four vessels targeted by pirates in the past week. UKMTO raised the threat level to “substantial.” Pirate Action Groups now operating up to 800 nautical miles offshore.
K&R cover is firmly back on the agenda.
Marine is where it’s getting real first. And the rest of the market is starting to follow.
Embedded gets its biggest passenger yet
Loving this one.
In part because I’m keen to get more EVs into the UK but also just love watching bolttech grow.
BYD – the world’s leading EV manufacturer – has appointed bolttech as its preferred embedded insurance partner across Europe. Already live in the UK, it’s rolling out to Italy, France, Germany and Spain this year.
The distribution angle is big enough on its own. But the more interesting part is that BYD is giving bolttech access to proprietary vehicle and battery data – safety insights, engineering performance – flowing directly to insurers for smarter EV underwriting.
That’s the embedded model maturing. Not just a cleaner purchase journey. Better inputs going back through the ecosystem.
A 50:50 partnership to serve the Indian market, with a separate life insurance agreement also in progress.
It’s been building since July last year, so not huge news from a timing perspective. But the scale is B.I.G.
India has got to be one of the most significant growth opportunities in global insurance right now – and this is a very serious vote of confidence from one of the world’s biggest insurers, alongside one of India’s most powerful conglomerates. Nice.
Watch this space as it moves from contracts to operations.
Whilst chatting Allianz, Allianz X also deepened its stake in Openly – the US premium home insurer that distributes exclusively through independent agents – with Allianz Re simultaneously expanding its reinsurance partnership alongside the equity move.
Strategic capital and capacity deployed together. Smart.
AI: live, loud and under scrutiny
Agentic underwriting is staying in the headlines.
CFC has launched Lane Assist – a pilot that takes a specialty cyber submission from email to quote recommendation in seconds. Live in their Cyber team, with real submissions and real quotes. Not a concept note. An actual thing, in production.
Duck Creek has also launched its insurance-native Agentic AI Platform – purpose-built for deploying, orchestrating and governing AI agents across the insurance lifecycle.
And Counterpart just raised a $50m Series C to double down on what they’re calling “Agentic Insurance” – specialty cover built specifically for AI-era business risks. This is a company positioning itself as the insurer for the world AI is building.
The direction is clear. But the questions are getting louder too.
QBE and Beazley have proposed sublimit language in cyber policies that would cap payouts on AI-related losses. A good thing or a bad thing? The insurers are saying it brings clarity. Brokers and lawyers aren’t so sure.
But it’s bigger than those two. Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb and Travelers have been quietly filing – and winning approval for – AI exclusion clauses in standard commercial liability policies. State regulators have approved more than 80% of applications so far.
The market is drawing lines around AI risk before the claims come in. Whether those lines are in the right place is another question entirely.
Delegated, carbon and the coverage gap
Three stories. Different worlds.
Same underlying idea – insurance reaching into places it hasn’t properly been before.
Atrium has deployed QualRisk’s Claims Pulse – an AI-powered platform that provides continuous, scalable oversight of delegated claims authority.
The bit that stands out: 100% audit coverage, continuously, if required. Traditional manual audit can’t get close to that.
If you’re not familiar with QualRisk, they’re Lloyd’s Lab alumni and a great example of market-ready outcomes the Lab supports.
Gallagher and another Lloyd’s Lab alumni, Kita, have launched what they’re calling an industry-first risk intelligence service for carbon removal projects.
The voluntary carbon market is growing fast and, as such, remains largely unregulated. This is a play to bring proper data-driven risk analysis to buyers, sellers and investors navigating that. Won’t be the last product in this space, that’s for sure.
And finally, another I have a lot of time for,Fair4All Financeis launching a pilot fund this summer to help develop home contents insurance for social housing tenants.
I encourage all of you guys, in and around this space, to check it out.
The protection gap here is significant and has been overlooked for a long time.
Right, it’s May and a couple of end of month events worth getting to:
I’ll do my best to be bright eyed and bushy tailed.
We’ll also be publishing a special edition of our Beyond Boundaries, interviewing a whole load of folk whilst out there, and manning a stand. Let’s hope a good few of the Sønr team are also out there!
That’s it for now.
Time to record another pod with Mr Walsh. Btw, if you haven’t tuned into these, please do. They are a lot of fun (and some good content in there too).
