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Hello, howdy y’all!

Guess what? With Matt C over in the US-of-A, SøNws is coming to you live and direct from the pen (keyboard) of me – Matt F.

Consider this fair warning… 😉

Either way, the sun’s shining, it’s been a great week and the prospect of a metric tonne of chocolaty egg-shaped goodness are all converging to put a smile on my face as we head into the long weekend.

But first, SøNws, and boy is there a load of stuff to cover off.

“But what’s the clever strategic lens you’re going to use to frame this, Matt?” I hear you cry.

Well, I see a few things coming together. Aside from the weather giving us Vitamin D-starved Brits a lift, there’s a real sense of positivity, but in a grown–up way.

You’ll no doubt have read the ever excellent Global Insurtech Report from the Gallagher team. It highlighted a bunch of indicators heading to the top right of a graph – and with AI playing a starring role with c. 80% of funding going to AI-centred companies.

But beyond the data (and we don’t have the space for the ‘is this a bubble’ debate) my observation is there’s a more measured and practically-focussed tone around both AI and innovation more broadly at events of late.

And while we still see, hear and feel a bunch of pain and problems to be solved, let’s lean into this shift from the theory, and experimentation and into the deployment. It’s super interesting.

AI gets the keys.

I’m still a way off giving my bank details to <insert your fav LLM here> but there’s been a load of news around the expansion of AI’s role – particularly in Specialty lines. So, let’s start there.

Novee has entered into an extended pilot with the Atrium crew. Novee’s AI platform will be helping them to better assess exposure concentration, and deliver faster quotes and referrals to brokers – in this case focussed on PV&T submissions. Check it out.

Next is news from CRC about a new product launch. It’s an AI-powered (obvs) engine embedded within their REDY platform. It’ll provide faster and better risk, market and placement insights, which we expect to be making some retail partners even happier as a result.

Same but different?

Given the disruptive potential of the various LLMs from a distribution perspective, unsurprisingly we’ve had a lot of conversations with clients about what this could mean for them. Massive opportunity? Total Armageddon? Something in between?

Either way it’s keeping people up at night and so it’s also unsurprising that Aviva’s launch of a consumer-facing quoting app on ChatGPT has grabbed the headlines.

Interestingly, with my consumer hat on, my initial reaction was a bit: ‘yeah, and…?’ because it’s ‘just’ another digital channel, right? But then the nerd hat goes on and the ‘yeah, and how are they doing that?’ and it gets a bit more interesting.

They’re using WaniWani to power it, while retaining access via the MyAviva app. If you haven’t already heard of the venture from the ex-Luko Founder, I suspect you will soon. Take a look at both this and the Aviva offering.

Re-re-re-return of the grunt work killer

As much as we’re seeing profound changes to insurance distribution, more broadly, the role of AI as ‘the grunt work killer’ continues at pace.

From the UK to HK we go, with Generali announcing a partnership with CoverGo. They’ll be leveraging their AI claims agent to automate health insurance claims, with the prerequisite augmentation of a human agent’s capacity and skills.

Finally we have funding news, with Cara announcing a $8m Seed round for their platform, which supports a range of operations including: coverage comparisons, proposal generation, ACORD/COI creation, and voice/email request handling. It’s a very strong Seed round, and interestingly Cara cites that 80% of their customers come from word of mouth. Great to see good news travelling and let’s hope the injection of capital only serves to accelerate that.

I do still wonder what these increasing efficiencies mean for org structures in the future. Surely, at some point there’s got to be an answer other than: ‘enabling teams to focus on other high-value tasks’. Or, as I discussed with a CEO a few weeks ago, those high-value tasks could be highly personally relevant – namely CV writing and interviewing… eek.

Showing me the money

What next?

Let’s chat cars.

CMT announced a mighty $350m raise. High-fives aside, investors now include Allianz, State Farm and Discovery, which I think is super interesting. Clear statement of intent aside, how does such a vested interest play out with a brand with such broad market application? And what will that mean for their strategy moving forward – it’s a big cheque, so will there be some shopping? I guess time will tell, but there’s definitely been some interesting commentary out there from smarter folks than me, so I’d recommend digging into it a bit.

Now, let’s switch gears from telematics to health partners, and Alan is back in the headlines – now sporting a new €100m in funding and a très healthy €5bn valuation. And it’s off the back of some strong performance numbers, including 53% YoY revenue growth, a major public sector win, growing commercial client list, scaling to Belgium and Spain, and that often elusive goal… reaching PROFITABILITY (in France). That said, overall operations are cited as nearing profitability too. Great news all round for one of the most enduring insurtech brands.

Sticking with the celebration theme, Qover celebrated their 10th birthday with candles, cake and $12m! Hooray. The embedded specialist is going to spend their birthday money in a range of areas – bolstering AI capabilities, and infrastructure. Taken out of context that doesn’t necessarily sound exciting, but target growth from 15m to 100m users in the next 5.5 years does! Sounds like it’s going to be quite a ride.

New-ish risks

News from the world of newer risks now, with a couple of stories from the worlds of Crypto and, er, Life insurance.

First up is Soter Insure, who’ve launched the world’s first Ethereum-denominated slashing insurance product. While slashing is typically caused by infrastructure errors rather than malicious intent, it’s serious and comes with automated penalties that validators need to mitigate. Which seems like a very good reason for insurance.

Now to Brazil, and news from Olé Life and Nomad. As more Brazilians diversify their wealth into USD, their protection has often remained in BRL. Olé Life is closing that gap with a fully digital, AI-powered experience, with protection in a stable, global currency compared with local (often more volatile) domestic one. The product provides a fixed dollar price for 5 years. Sounds like a model that might travel too…

More strategic stuff

Let’s start with our friends at Chaucer and their partnership with Ceto AI, which sees the launch of a new marine MGA, operating as a Lloyd’s coverholder. Ceto is authorised to bind marine hull risks on behalf of Chaucer’s Lloyd’s syndicate, and in a true Lloyd’s stylee, additional capacity will be provided by the good folks at Tokio Marine Kiln. Congrats to the teams all round – innovation, collaboration and some celebration.

Then we move to news of Infosys acquiring the US-based Guidewire-specialist P&C consulting firm, Stratus. The deal will see Stratus bolster Infosys’ global reach with industry specialism in their AI and Cloud offerings. From what we see and hear, this isn’t the only example of this type of activity in the market, so another space to watch.

He came. He saw.

He’s staying for two weeks more…

And from across the ocean comes a quick update from Matt C:

Landed Sunday. First stop Whole Foods. US travel and bad food go hand-in-hand and I’ve made my peace with breaking that habit. Fridge stocked, week ready.

Meetings galore to start with including a long overdue one with Camila Serna from Chubb. One of those names you’ve known for years, dozens of mutual connections, never actually met. We fixed that. She also saved me with some brilliant NYC tips for keeping a seven-year-old happy. Thank you 🙏

Then off to Insurtech NY. Huge congratulations to David Gritz and Tony Lew. They’ve built something with real warmth to it. For years I was the one on the app chasing meetings. This time I was apologising because I couldn’t get to everyone. How time changes things.

Then Monday night, the Turris, Finpro, Scout and Loro party. A great room, a lot of laughing and some great catch ups. Thanks chaps.

Really excitingly, on Tuesday I gave my first proper Sønr 2.0 pitch. It came second (to which my friend Alex from Quantexa reminded me that second is just first loser). BUT we had a mountain of sign ups to Beta.

Then came a quick Unfiltered episode with Nigel Walsh before the headphones gave up on me. The classic professionalism you’d expect from the two of us.

Now, in between a tonne of meetings and some family road-tripping, I’m looking forward to the InsurTech America Symposium down in Hartford on the 13th-14th April. It’s looking like the sort of line up you’d expect from Stacey Brown and the team – can’t wait. And, as ever, give me a shout if you’re in town.

Regulation, experimentation, and taxis. The best of the rest.

Did you hear the one about the NAIC AI evaluation pilot? Me neither, but it’s an interesting story with 12 US states beginning to send regulatory inquiries to insurers about AI usage. It’s an inevitability and a very healthy one given the increasing purview and scope of AI’s usage in this week’s SøNws alone.

Polish market leader PZU have announced a new collab with Softwise AI – a solution focussed on structuring and integrating dispersed, unstructured data – this time to support property insurance products. Given the PZU team’s experience, I’m always interested to see what comes out of these types of exploratory relationships. Fingers crossed good things come for all concerned.

Admiral is in the news again, following partnerships with Tide, acquisition news with Flock and now the launch of a new Taxi insurance product. The timing seems to be good with recent news of strong growth in taxi and PHV fleet growth. I wonder what’s next…

–
And on that note, what’s next for me is releasing this out into the world of (hopefully to avid/any) readers, swiftly followed by a seemingly endless stream of family visits, interspersed by trips to the park, and more chocolate than is healthy for my kids.

Wish me luck riding the inevitable blood sugar-related rollercoaster. Good times.

Big love,

Matt (F)

Make smarter decisions with AI-driven market intelligence.


Sønr helps (re)insurers around the world explore market trends, track competitor activity, and scout and assess best-in-class tech companies.