3.5m reasons to try out Sønr

Hello.

This week I bring you 3.5+ million reasons to head here.

While things may have slowed down a bit this summer, we’ve been busy at Sønr, cooking up some game-changing platform updates:

🚀 Massive Data Boost:
We’ve supercharged our database. All our customers now have full access to 3.5+ million companies within Sønr. Search, track, and connect like never before.

🌎 Breaking Language Barriers:
With clients all over the world our market intelligence can now be translated into 80 different languages. Global reach, unlocked. Oosh.

🤖 AI is Here to Help:
Our AI-assisted search is being rolled out, making it even easier to find what you need. If you’re a client and don’t have this enabled, come join the test group.

And remember, behind all this is a dedicated team of researchers, analysts, and client success specialists ready to support you 24/7. All included in your subscription.

I know, I know. It’s almost too good to be true. You’re welcome.

Right, you’re not here for a Sønr sell.

Let’s get into some industry chat and see what’s been going on this past fortnight.

Health, San Francisco and iFHP

It was great to see Spring Fertility has partnered with Headspace to enhance its fertility support services by integrating mental health and wellness resources.

Having been through years of realising it’s not so easy getting pregnant, and then discovering our journey was far from unique, I can appreciate the value of this one.

I’ll be in San Francisco meeting with Headspace (and many others) 7-11th October as part of the iFHP CX Innovation Week.

If you didn’t know iFHP, they’re a global network of health payers (a mix of 70 health organisations and insurers across 23 countries) which come together to share experiences and discover solutions to common challenges.

Having worked with them, and a number of their members, for a few years now, I’ve been given the great honour of wrapping up the week.

If you’re working in health and innovation, do check it out. I think there’s still space to get involved (although you’d have to check in with the iFHP crew!). Plus it’s the week before I TC Vegas and just down the road so a good double-header.

Also, if you’re based out of San Francisco and fancy a single-origin pour-over coffee, meticulously brewed with a Chemex, with beans sourced from a small, sustainable farm, paired with a gluten-free, vegan avocado on locally sourced sourdough and a drizzle of artisanal olive oil infused with Meyer lemon, or a beer, hit me up. I’m there.

Lloyd’s Lab Cohort 13

100s of applicants.
20 pitches.
10-12 selected.

There’s always SO much talent coming through the Lloyd’s Lab and this cohort is no exception.

Congrats to all on the shortlist 🚀🚀

If you’re in London on the 10th Sept, do come along.
If you’re not, you can still join virtually.

To register and view the companies attending: https://www.lloyds.com/news-and-insights/events/cohort-13-pitch-day

It’ll be great exposure to some bleeding-edge thinking and innovation.

As I’ve said many, many times I’m super proud that Sønr is the official scouting partner for the Lloyd’s Lab. It’s a unique and privileged role and we couldn’t wish for a better partner 🙏

Coffee, Carbon and Cyber

Let’s start with coffee.

Liberty Mutual Reinsurance has announced, through a broader collaboration, a new parametric insurance product designed to protect Kenyan coffee growers from financial losses due to drought.

It has joined forces with Sprout – a tech company specialising in climate risk management (and not to be confused with Sprout.ai which shortlisted for the latest Lloyd’s Lab cohort – see above!), and Britam, a financial services firm in Kenya, which will serve as the local underwriter for the programme.

If you’re not familiar with Sprout, it uses satellite data and machine learning to analyse and assess historical weather patterns. I genuinely love this stuff. So good to see.

Keeping with climate a little longer, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for the Cytora team:

Integrated GeoSmart Information‘s data into their digital risk processing platform to provide insurers access to almost complete flood and climate risk data. I like this one.
Expanded their partnership with Arch Insurance into the US market with a view to Arch providing ever more accurate and efficient insurance operations. Nice

On the carbon front, you may have seen Marsh announce the launch of a new insurance product tailored for the transportation and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).

The solution addresses the critical insurance limitations that have previously hindered the progression of the carbon capture and storage industry.

And finally cyber.

Cyan AG has partnered with Wefox Austria to launch a new cybersecurity and insurance offering.

That’s it. No more. You’re up to date with specialty.

Beyond (auto) insurance

We’re spending more and more time scouting tech that sits beyond the traditional insurance space. Especially tech lending itself to providing a richer customer experience whilst, in parallel, decreasing exposure to risk.

One of those, aligned to motor, is DC Connected Car which has just secured a €2.1m Seed.

It’s early days but these guys have set up a ‘virtual technician platform’ – a fusion of remote diagnostics and advanced AI which delivers automated, intelligent insights into vehicle health and provides real-time problem-solution recommendations.

And how does this help? Well their approach, in theory, reduces the need for physical inspections and repairs, provides remote support and makes the customer experience a whole load better.

Pushing out to Korea and Carrot has acquired the exclusive right to use behavioural-based insurance (BBI) for six months from the General Insurance Association of Korea.

The Carrot system calculates safe driving scores each month and provides reimbursements based on the number of achievements unlocked during that period.

A few interesting stats I manage to grab from the press release – in the past 3 years Carrot has accumulated driving data from approximately 1.5 million customers and analysed 7.4 billion KM of driving data. Nice.

Bringing in the sales

Singapore HQ-ed Igloo has announced that it has expanded its digital platform, Ignite, to the Philippines.

Ignite launched in early 2022 to help sales intermediaries sell easier, faster, and more effectively, and is already live in both Vietnam and Indonesia.

From Asia to North America and Canadian insurtech Walnut has secured $4.6m to advance its embedded insurance solutions.

With a focus on enterprises and financial institutions its current focus is on loan and debt protection products.

Smart dog bowls and robot pet trainers

I’m never too sure what innovation I expect to see when it comes to pet insurance.

A dog bowl that connects to a smart collar and automatically pours the precise amount of kibble into it. That could be handy. Or some kind of robot dog trainer/walker which sends live updates to my phone.

We’ll get there. For now it feels like doing what we’ve been doing for quite some time. Just better. And maybe that’s okay too.

This week we look at a couple of businesses looking to break the norm and push the industry forward.

Companion Protect, a Kansas City-based company, has successfully raised $20.25m in a Series A extension round.

The newly secured funds will be directed towards expanding product offerings and partnerships, as well as driving digital innovation aimed at enhanced CX.

And a little closer to home, Swiss pet insurance provider, Calingo has secured CHF 3.2m to enhance its tech platform and expand its market presence in the Swiss Market.

Interesting fact: Less than 10% of pets are insured in Switzerland. To put that in context over 80% of pets are insured in Sweden, and in the US less than 2% are.

Big consultancies and deepfakes

I’ve enjoyed a couple of articles from The Times this week.

The first was a survey of 702 execs across the US and UK who worked with the three biggest consultancies. The focus was on corporate transformation projects.

Lo and behold 84% of respondents felt they “were no help at all”! Amazing. McKinsey, BCG and Bain were approached for comment 🙂

The other, was off the back of a deepfake business we’ve been looking into a lot for clients recently.

It is an interview with Victor Riparbellia, founder of Synthesia. It’s well worth a read and there was a great line in it, referring to the bar where the interview was held, which I’m sure all entrepreneurs can relate to:

“We’ve had quite a lot of beers here discussing why we’re definitely going to go bankrupt next week and why we think this could become a $20 billion company,”

Love it.

If you’d like to learn more about deepfake technology, how it maps to your business, what your competitors are doing in the space, and which tech companies are driving change and protection, please do get in touch.

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Right, I think that’s me done.

As always, do get in touch if you’d like to better understand how Sønr’s market intelligence can help your business.

It’s a long weekend in the UK albeit a little broken up for me as I’ve my first Hyrox event on Sunday. 😮

Wish me luck!

Matt

SøNws is brought to you by Sønr.

Sønr helps insurers source and connect with best in class investment, acquisition and partnership opportunities. It works with nearly 50 insurers around the world – including Generali, Travelers, WTW, RGA, QBE and Tokio Marine.

It combines a SaaS market intelligence platform, which tracks 3+ companies globally, with a team of researchers, analysts and consultants, which is available on demand 24/7. It also hosts a suite of innovation management tools designed for teams to better collaborate and track scouting, PoCs and investment activity.

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