Fair enough: it took $19.8bn in advertising revenue in Q2 alone. That money depends on shoppers scrolling past sponsored listings. Then there’s all the extras people add to the basket on the way through, and you’d be losing some serious revenue.
Insurify‘s problem is similar. It gets paid when shoppers buy through it (albeit it gave a very lengthy set of reasons why Muse wasn’t good for the industry).
EverQuote shares fell 15% the day after Amazon’s block.
It hasn’t said a word publicly about Muse. But it’s now hiring an AI technical lead to build an insurance marketplace that AI agents use to shop on a person’s behalf. Interesting. It also took a stake in Waniwani a few weeks back, which builds the plumbing for selling insurance through AI agents.
Kin‘s position is that ‘We’re not going to block Muse,’ said Sean Harper.
Kin sells direct, so it doesn’t care how the shopper arrives. And because it already knows most of what it needs about a home from the address, Muse can get a quote after just a few questions.
Finally Engine by Gen went that one step further and launched a site through its Savvy marketplace built specifically for AI agents to shop.
Shoppers get anonymous rate estimates first, and their details only go to insurers when they ask for personalised quotes.
Honestly, I have so much opinion and thought on all this and more. If you’d like to chat any of it through, give me a shout (and a few days to catch up on sleep).
The Sønr team is also doing a MOUNTAIN of research into future scenarios, emergent trends, vendors driving solutions in and around this space, strategy workshops, white-labelled thought leadership, and, and, and…
If you’re not looking into this space, let alone experimenting, you really should be.
Insuring the AI boom
Interestingly Nvidia has had early talks with insurers about taking on some of the risk of lending against its GPUs. Howden Re is reportedly working on a structure.
One option is residual-value cover – the lender gets paid if a neocloud borrower defaults and the pledged chips can’t be resold for enough.
Closer to home, AI is now being written into policy wordings.
CFC added affirmative AI wording to its standalone IP policy, confirming that claims involving AI, from training data through to generated outputs, stay covered where they otherwise would be.
And Beazley announced two new cyber endorsements for businesses’ own use of AI: one pays to switch off your own AI when it misbehaves, and the other covers regulatory defence and fines if you misuse it unintentionally.
Personal lines meet commercial lines
Mark Wahlberg’s 4am club has nothing on me and Rob Schimek.
I found this guy in the gym at 3am every morning whilst in Vegas. And that’s for the second year running. It made up for the fact we missed each other in Singapore!
The partnership is set to build a combined commercial and personal lines offering for agents, insurers and embedded partners across the US, Europe and Asia. Bold Penguin brings its commercial exchange, carrier network and DeX ai, and bolttech brings personal lines and distribution across 39 markets.
Nice.
Taking the cloud out of telematics
Our friends at IMS have launched Edge Intelligence – processing driving and crash signals on the phone itself and sending back only the outputs a carrier needs.
With most of the cloud processing and storage costs gone, telematics can move beyond narrow UBI programmes and into the main apps customers already use.
IMS told us it can cut the cost of collecting smartphone driving data by up to 90%, and LexisNexis Risk Solutions is the first to take advantage, building its Drive Metrics scoring model into the EdgeSDK for US carriers.
And over in Vienna, VIG has bought 25% of Dolphin Technologies, its telematics partner since 2022.
Dolphin’s tech already runs at seven VIG companies across Central and Eastern Europe, from Kooperativa in Czechia to Ray Sigorta in Turkey.
Weeks to hours. Apparently.
Marsh has launched Broker WorkBench – an AI platform its London market brokers can use to match and send placements, negotiate terms and bind.
Marsh says it cuts specialty placement from the usual two to four weeks to days or hours, with brokers still signing off on every placement.
And Vertafore is doing the same for independent agencies.
Its new agents read commercial policies, key them into the agency system and check them for errors. Vertafore says early adopters are reviewing documents up to 90% faster. An agent that picks which carrier to send a risk to is next.
The IPO window is open. Ish.
Orion180 priced its IPO at $12, below its $15 to $17 range, then fell on debut.
Bamboo pulled its listing on the day it was meant to price, citing market conditions.
Meanwhile, the biggest listing in waiting showed its numbers.
Anthropic‘s draft prospectus puts 2025 revenue at nearly $4.6bn, twelve times the year before, with an operating loss of about $8bn. It then booked around $16.2bn in the first half of 2026, against OpenAI‘s $12.4bn. OpenAI says it won’t list this year.
Coverager has found public documentation for a Corgi Bank API. It covers current and savings accounts, payments, business loans and mortgages, plus pieces only a chartered bank needs, like a Federal Reserve master account. Nothing has been announced.
Also, Guy Goldstein has taken on the newly created role of Chief AI Officer on the ERGO Group board, effective 1 October, and stays on as CEO of ERGO NEXT. Chief Digital Officer Mark Klein leaves at the end of the year.
And finally WTW has signed a global deal to roll its Radar pricing software out across Zurich‘s target retail markets, having previously deployed it country by country.
If you’re new to Sønr
The world is changing faster than insurance. This past fortnight has been a great example of that!
For ten years we’ve tracked the companies, technologies and trends changing insurance in over 60 countries, building up data nobody else holds. You can draw on it in three ways.
The platform gets you from question to answer in minutes, not weeks.
Our research and advisory team works alongside yours to pressure-test opportunities and build the evidence behind decisions you’ll have to defend.
And the Emerging Trends Academy is where the real conversation happens: one trend, twelve months, the right people.
Budgets and strategy for 2027 are being locked in right now. Most bad bets aren’t made in doubt. They’re made with confidence on half the picture. We can fill in the other half.
Episode 25 is out: Personal Agents Impacting Insurance.
Nige has officially broken up with Instinct and is now all over Muse. Lucky Muse.
As for the chat, we get into whether Insurify was right to block it, what EverQuote is planning with its Waniwani hedge, ambient AI (which is a really interesting space btw), and who owns the prevention models.
Plus it wouldn’t be Unfiltered without some random chat about Meta glasses, sauna blankets and sweaty taxi rides.
I’m currently at the burning eyeballs, blurred vision and nodding head stage of travel. The good news is it’s time to head to the gate.
Have great weekends. As always, thanks for reading. Please do share this with any friends or colleagues who might be interested.
Until next time.
Big love, Matt
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