How do you like them lemons?

It was priced at $29 a share and by lunchtime had climbed to over $60.
That’s a market cap of well over $2bn.

I don’t want to claim all the credit for Lemonade’s IPO success, but it just shows what happens when you get that #1 spot in the Insurtech 100.

Genuinely chuffed for Daniel Schreiber and the team. Congrats to you guys.

The impact of Lemonade’s IPO on the winder industry, a dive into WeSure’s numbers, and a pile of insurance innovation to kick off the weekend.

More broadly I’m excited about what this Lemonade’s IPO does for insurance. In particular how Lemonade’s IPO will undoubtedly attract new entrepreneurs into the industry and act as a marker in the sand for those already here:

These guys are 2.5 years into their journey with 100m registered users, 40m active customers, and they doubled customer acquisition between Q4 ’19 and Q1 ’20. Huge numbers. The best bit? According to Alan, they’re just getting started.

He talks at length about their WeFit product (very similar to what we see from Vitality), the growth opportunities from developing products at a lower price point, and their responsibility to insure those who might be ill already.

And MGA startup SingularCover, which works with small businesses, freelancers and the self-employed, has raised a €4.5m Series A – one of the top financing rounds for a Spanish startup so far this year.

Finally, it was good to see SoftBank announcing their intent to make $150k investments into 14 companies run by founders from minorities as part of its Emerge accelerator programme.

Launches
Where to start? There has been so much activity in the past week or so.

Let’s go with Laka. We’ve got to know these guys well over the past few years and I enjoy their reframing of traditional insurance. Positioned as a community-based insurer of cyclists, they’ve launched Recovery – a new policy for both mind and body.

Priced at £11 per month, and backed by Zurich, the accident and injury policy also offers specialist advice and psychological treatment.

Keeping with wheels and another brand reframing how we traditionally buy insurance is Jaguar Land Rover. It’s launched PIVOTAL – a new subscription model where customers pay a monthly fee for the vehicle’s rental, which covers the cost of insurance, tax, servicing and any repairs needed. Very Drover.

Bupa From Home customers can now get 24/7 advice from nurses on everyday health concerns, treatment from GPs, physios and mental health therapists, and fast access to diagnosis and treatment for critical conditions such as cancer, cardiac and mental health.

Another health-related service I noticed this week was CNA launching their The View From Home – a new program to help long-term care policyholders age independently at home for longer. It’s been created in partnership with the insurtech The Helper Bees, in particular using their Care Concierge product.

Shifting to life insurance and Japan’s Dai-ichi Life is set to become the first big life insurer in Japan to sell policies digitally. The new service, which will use a chat app and video conferencing tools, will launch later this year.

In a culture where face-to-face distribution is so important, and Dai-ichi alone has more than 40K sales representatives, this is big news.

Finally, I mentioned Wefox a little earlier and it’s just announced the launch of a new venture – its developer-first API platform, Koble. It’ll be super-interesting to see how this is adopted by insurers – arguably with the credibility of Wefox and burgeoning investment in hybrid infrastructure, and just how big a slice of the market they grab.

It can’t be long before they’re following in the footsteps of Lemonade’s IPO .

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Time to wrap up. For all those who enquired after my building of the climbing frame, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s all up and running. And still standing. Pictures available on request.

Some of you may have had a note from me on LinkedIn. I promised myself that I’d be a little more sociable this year and, on the basis I’m planning on not heading to any events anytime soon, I thought it’d be a good start.

If you’d like to connect and keep in touch, my LinkedIn handle is below.

Exploring the value of Sønr within your company
We’ve got some bandwidth for a few more enterprise Sønr trials over the summer.

Even if you wouldn’t be leading on this – an introduction to the right person would be hugely appreciated. We’re now working with some amazing clients and I’m keen to keep our momentum going.

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Finally, our latest Spøtlight.

This week we caught up with Niels Thoné of Sprout AI who recently announced a Seed round of $2.5m ahead of a planned £10m round Series A later this year. If you don’t know much about these guys, definitely worth a read. Interestingly Niels cites the press Lemonade’s IPO was receiving back in 2018 as a nudge for the business.

Have a good weekend all.

Matt
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wearematt/

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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