Life innovation, Swedish dogs and safer roads

Hello all.

Now, if you thought Sønr was an incredible market intelligence platform that gave you the knowledge and tools to stay relevant, compete and plan for the future, well, you’re kind of right.

But there’s more.

As the platform grows in popularity it’s not always so easy saying hello to everyone who is using it. And with that, the opportunity to talk through how else we might support you.

The long and short is we have a world-class team of experts who can help with:

• Innovation awakening
• Market analysis
• Trends reporting
• Building partnerships

These services are just some of the ways we help bridge the gap between intel, strategy and execution. Or put another way, limiting the time to go from great idea to the implementation of game-changing tech.

If you’re already using Sønr and would like to chat through any of this, drop me a line. If you’re not using Sønr and would like to chat through any of this, drop me a line.

New lease for life
Life is the one area of insurance that has been heavily criticized for the lack of innovation to date. That said, just last week both the #1 and #2 of the Sønr 100 announced their steps into life insurance innovation.

Maybe things are about to change?

In its Q3 2020 letter to shareholders, Lemonade revealed it’d be testing a life insurance product over the following 90 days, and that it had established the Lemonade Life Insurance Agency.

And WeSure’s CEO Alan Lau said the company is moving into more complex, long-term policies such as life and wealth management. It hopes they’ll make up 20% of their business within four years – the company currently has around 50m active customers so we’re talking big numbers.

If you’d like more of an inside track on either business, I caught up with each a few months back:

• Lemonade – A pre-IPO interview with Daniel Schreiber
• WeSure – An interview with Alan Lau

In other life innovation this week we saw RGAX announce the launch of Tngible, a wellness platform that helps life insurers better engage with customers by providing access to real-time data, health education, and personalized protection products. It’s a white label solution and definitely worth checking out if you’re in this space.

Keeping with Wills for a minute and there’s definitely a growing interest in the space amongst insurers, with the likes of Everplans, Fabric and Tomorrow all receiving backing from insurers such as Allianz and RGAx.

To add to the list, this week Northwestern Mutual joined a $15m Series B to back Trust & Will. Since their launch in 2017, they’ve provided digital estate planning services to more than 160,000 people. Not quite WeSure numbers but they’re doing okay.

It’s Prime time for pill delivery
I’m going to keep it light on the health side of things this week. There’s an absolute mountain of activity and if you are a health insurer, give me a shout. I’d be happy to share more.

Let’s start with Amazon having launched its online pharmacy service. Available in 45 states and promising free two-day delivery to Prime subscribers. Not bad, right? I can’t wait to see if and how they scale this to other countries. Interestingly shares in US pharmacies CVS and Walgreens dropped 10% at the announcement.

A couple more that jumped out.

Levels announced a $12m seed round to help bring its biowearable metabolic sensor to market. The platform pairs continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) with software to provide the wearer insights about their health. Their pitch is that this will help close the loop between food, exercise and well-being.

And after gaining FDA approval earlier in the year, digital therapeutic company, Pear has this week launched its prescription only service – Somryst to treat chronic insomnia.

In sensor-land, everyone’s favourite Hippo Insurance has partnered with Kangaroo to offer new customers Kangaroo’s sensors which can alert home owners to unexpected leaks and motion.

And finally a company I also really like is Flyreel, an AI solution for residential and commercial property insurance. They announced a $10 million Series A this week.

Flyreel now works with 15 major insurers, providing them with comprehensive, ground-level interior and exterior property data to improve underwriting and claims outcomes across their book of business.

I’m catching up with Cole, the founder of Flyreel next week, so more to follow.

New York cats, Swedish dogs
I’m still not convinced this is the most innovative model out there but NYC startup, Bond Vet, has announced a $17 million Series A.

From what I can gather the money is to open a bunch of well-designed inner-city vet practices. And whilst there’s plenty of digital within their offering, they also talk about ‘high-friction floors so puppies don’t slip’ and ‘examination tables that give pet parents the ability to remain close to their furry friend during procedures’.

Out in Sweden, vet-on-demand app FirstVet has raised an additional €30m, just one year after its €20m Series B financial round. These guys are the pet equivalent of telemedicine startups Kry or Babylon Health. Over the past few years they’ve expanded to Finland, Norway, Denmark, the UK and Germany. The new money is to go big in the US.

Having doubled their total number of active users from 200,000 to 400,000 the last 12 months, they’re one to watch.

Safer roads
A couple of safer road announcements this week.

Branch Insurance, a startup offering super-quick home and auto insurance, has partnered with telematics leader Cambridge Mobile Telematics. They’re launching Community Drive – pretty much the usual ‘drive safely and get money off your premium’ model.

And one I really like is Israel’s Ride Vision which announced a $7m investment for its AI-driven safety tech to prevent motorcycle collisions. Their plan is to roll out in Europe in 2021. Just writing that I realise we’re talking just weeks away. Where did 2020 go?

Opening up new markets
Revolutionary life innovation is my absolute favorite. Whether it’s been validated elsewhere (geography or industry) and applied to a new market, or it’s something brand new, either way, it’s super exciting.

To kick things off, comparison site Turtlemint, who we met a few years ago when we took BGL Group out to India, continues to thrive and has just raised a $30m Series D. With a 3% insurance penetration, the Indian market is ripe for the picking.

Another market I’m obsessed with, for similar reasons, is Africa. It’s great to hear about the launch of OneSpark. Their objective is to ‘innovate in an area that the insurance sector has forgotten and neglected, with world-first products that uplift and empower individuals to lead better lives.

And a couple of others that caught my eye.

US-based insurtech Highwing has raised $4m in Seed funding. Highwing claims to have developed the first open data platform for commercial insurance, enabling brokers to more easily leverage data throughout the customer lifecycle.

And Blink which launched ‘Blink Interruption’, its latest offering in its suite of parametric insurance solutions. Part of why I like it so much as it being a product of the 10-week Lloyd’s Lab accelerator program. The other part is because it’s market-ready and cuts average business interruption claims processing time by up to 95%. Nice.

Date for the diary
If you haven’t signed up to The Future of Insurance Europe next Tuesday and Wednesday, you might want to.

Some top speakers, tackling the biggest challenges across insurance. Will be a good ‘un for sure.

Keep well, safe, happy, healthy. You know the drill.

Matt

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.

Try out a 14-day trial of Sønr to access intelligence on market trends, competitor playbooks and disruptive tech companies globally. Plus collaboration tools to help you track and manage life innovation activity across your organisation.

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