Behavioral Banking, smart(ish) tech and walking cars

Welcome to 2019. I caught this earlier in the week and absolutely love the idea.Startup or Thesis?
The Institute of Information Technology (ITT) in Delhi are allowing PhD students the opportunity to start a business instead of a thesis. They currently have some 25,000 working on their doctorates and their plan is to hive a portion of them off into a separate incubation unit, provide some seed capital, free mentoring, VC connections and accommodation.

Just brilliant. Maybe something we can start nearer to home?

Health Insurance to Behavioral Banking
Discovery Bank has been getting a few headlines this week. Launching in March, Discovery, the parent company of Vitality, will be the world’s first ‘Behavioral bank’.

The Group’s CEO, Adrian Gore, says this about the challenger bank:

‘“Our main goal is to improve your financial health by helping change how you work with your money. This is not a skinny fintech play that is an app. It’s a proper capital-heavy bank, which is mobile-led and has a full retail offering.”

The bank’s proposition is that five controllable behaviours are linked to three risks that lead to 80% of the reasons why individuals do not meet their financial obligations; reward customers for their “good behaviours” and you better control the risk.

Discovery plans to attract clients from an existing client base of 300,000 credit card holders and about 1 million Vitality members to its behavioral mobile-banking operation.

Flying Police Drone Bikes to…
That’s right, it’s CES time. Again. 180,000 people from 155 countries all visiting 4,500 exhibitors. Fun, but I’d trade it all in a heartbeat for a cabin in Tahoe.

Before I get on to the relevant stuff, a few randoms:

FoldiMate – the fridge-sized, laundry folding machine
FasTeesH – the 10 second toothbrush (or Y-Brush as it’s called)
Project Elevate – Hyundai’s walking car

I actually quite like Hyundai’s car, in part for brilliantly crazy innovation but also because it comes out of Hyundai Cradle, the venture arm that invests and partners with innovative startups. Hyundai’s pitching the concept as the future of disaster response, especially when rescue might involve navigating debris fields, as well as a resource for people living with disabilities.

>> More than just an alarm clock
As always, there was a pile of voice tech down there. Whilst you can now chat with Google Assistant through your bathroom mirror, possibly a little more interesting for the world of insurance is Alexa becoming baked into the core of vehicles.

Over the years there have been a few in-vehicle Alexa demos, but this year Qualcomm’s new platform lifted Alexa from an entertainment control system to a core interface for mapping smarts through to vehicle diagnostics.

>> Smart(ish) tech for the home
Alright, maybe not the smartest of home tech and doesn’t accelerate tech innovation but Philips Hue has just launched their outside security light.

Yup, it’s a light that detects movement and err turns on. Oh, and it can be controlled by an app on your phone. Of course it can.

Please tell me that’s not it. Surely it can’t be long before it shifts to become the video-enabled – think the Ring of security lights, then it becomes interesting.

Possibly a little more exciting is Arlo’s new DIY security system.

Behavioral banking, accelerate tech innovation

Owned by Netgear, Arlo’s system detects motion, carbon monoxide, water leaks, temperature changes and and and. Actually, one of those ‘ands’ is that it can play audio when it detects movement. It’ll be like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off all over again. Just with dogs this time.

It’ll be available to buy later in 2019 and, if priced correctly, will definitely help accelerate the adoption of this kind of tech innovation.

And Now to Dubai
This week, as part of our Spøtlight series, we caught up with Walid Daniel Dib, who helped launch Addenda, a Dubai-based InsurTech that is in the process of building a life insurance consortium on the blockchain. Originally inspired by B3i, the company announced a seed round at the beginning of December with a view to close out at the end of April.

—

Okay, enough from me I’m sure. It’s time I headed out for a run to burn off some serious over-eating this Christmas.

Don’t forget, if you are, or know of, an Insurtech that would like to be considered in this year’s Insurtech100, drop us a line.

If you’d like to get hold of a (free) digital copy of our latest Open Insurance report, you can find it here.

Have good weekends all.

Matt

—
MATT CONNOLLY
Founder & CEO
+44 7788 711 104
www.tallt.ventures

Request a demo of Sønr, our market scanning platform

Sø.Nws is brought to you by Sønr, which in turn was created by Tällt.

No one is quite sure what’s happened to all the vowels but if you did want a market scanning and innovation consultancy to work with, we’re pretty excellent.

Our vision is to accelerate corporate innovation and entrepreneurship by providing intelligence on the trends, competitor playbooks, and global disruptive tech, and to create new opportunities with ambitious organizations around the world.

If you enjoyed this email, please forward to a friend and suggest they subscribe. If you didn’t do feel free to unsubscribe from this list or let me know what you’d rather read about.

Behavioral Banking, smart(ish) tech and walking cars

More from the SøNws archive:

Subscribe to SøNws

Sønr Research

Sønr Platform

Business Outcomes

Insights

More from the SøNws archive:

Subscribe to SøNws

Share this article:

Explore the Sønr platform