First up, a big thanks to Anika for writing the last edition SøNws.
As you’ll have read both Scout (Columbus) and ITC Europe (Barcelona) were a big hit. Hugely valuable for Sønr – seeing clients, building brand, demo’ing Sønr 2.0. All the good stuff.
It feels like these guys have come from nowhere and suddenly they’re raising a whopping $106m Series B1, against a backdrop of a $2.6bn valuation. Gulp.
And bear in mind, that’s just weeks after a $160m Series B.
The pitch is bold: an AI-native, full-stack commercial insurance platform built for startups. Underwriting, policy admin, claims – the whole stack – rebuilt around AI.
And you know what? There’s part of this I really like.
I like that we’re seeing insurtech in the spotlight again. It attracts entrepreneurs. It attracts capital. It injects a bit of excitement. Conversation. Hope.
But it also feels like we’re going around the cycle again. And not in a good way.
Investors from outside insurance. Growth celebrated before the model’s properly tested. Talk of profitability before claims have arrived. I feel like we may have been here before.
If you haven’t tuned in, the 20VC interview is well worth a listen. Not so much of an insurance chat but an interesting insight into their leader Nico Laqua.
The expectation for the team to work seven days a week. The founder sleeping in the office. A 24-hour Corgi Cafe. Corgi tattoos. The lot. Not my cup of tea. Or coffee. But maybe intensity looks different for a generation raised on 24/7 digital stimulation and this is the perfect extension.
Or maybe not. Time will tell. Either way, one to watch. Closely.
Workflows that save hours, days, weeks of time
The Sønr 2.0 beta rollout is in full swing. The waitlist is long but we’re chewing through it.
If you’ve not seen it yet, it’s a ground-up rebuild of the Sønr platform.
The latest models sat across Sønr’s unique data + public data, all orchestrated and designed specifically for insurance, built on 10 years of knowing how to do this shit. It’s genuinely freaking impressive.
The problem we’re solving?
Everyone now has AI that can answer questions. Almost nobody has AI that knows your business, your role, which questions matter, and what knowledge you’re already sitting on.
Generic tools give you something fast, confident and seemingly comprehensive. What they don’t give you is the ‘so what’. And certainly not with any accuracy. That’s the gap 2.0 is built for.
The beta feedback so far has been brilliant. Some of it glowing. Some of it challenging. Some of it pointing out things that simply didn’t work. All of it, brilliantly useful.
We’re doing this in the open and we’re building it with the market. And I’m loving it.
The best part – for me at least – is the 30+ workflows we’re developing to automate tasks our clients are spending days if not weeks on. Or worse, paying someone else tens of thousands to deliver for them.
For those we haven’t got to yet… we’re coming for you. If you’re up for testing it and helping shape, please get involved.
Distribution finds new front doors
The biggest distribution story of the fortnight comes from Japan.
PayPay – SoftBank’s payments super-app with 74 million registered users – has agreed to acquire a 70.2% stake in T&D Financial Life for around $840m.
That’s roughly 60% of Japan’s working-age population suddenly one tap from life insurance, inside the app they use to buy coffee. And everything else. Seriously interesting right?
The super-app playbook has been building across Southeast Asia for years. It’s now landing in one of the world’s biggest life markets, at full blast.
The licence, product stack and regulatory plumbing come from T&D. The distribution comes from PayPay. Watch this one closely.
Sticking with embedded, bolttech has begun working with BYD to provide embedded insurance across major European markets. Loving this one.
EVs, embedded distribution and a manufacturer rapidly eating European market share.
A lot of signal in one partnership, not least for every motor insurer wondering where their future customers will actually buy cover.
The regulator is reading the same script
Great to see the FCA has just published its first Emerging Technology Horizon Scan, mapping how emerging tech could reshape financial services.
The standout theme? What they call “personalised intelligence” – AI becoming the main interface between consumers and their finances. Sound familiar? I’m sure I was writing about this just a few weeks back and definitely one me and Nigel have been chatting about on Unfiltered. A lot.
I like this one and couldn’t resist sharing – even if comparatively small in the grand scheme of what else is out there.
3IF Ventures has reached a $12m first close for its Inclusive Insurance Investment Fund.
The fund is focused on early-stage insurance technology across Africa, anchored by FSD Africa Investments and ZEP-RE. It’ll invest from pre-seed through to Series B across climate resilience, agriculture, digital health, SME protection and asset cover.
This is exactly the kind of capital the African market needs more of.
Big protection gaps. Massive underserved populations. And, hopefully, a new generation of insurance businesses built for local realities rather than imported models.
In the same spirit, kinda, Ageas Federal Life has partnered with Policybazaar to expand online life insurance distribution in India, launching with savings products before extending into term and ULIPs.
It’s not quite a flashy AI interface. But sometimes reach, trust and making life products easier to buy in huge underpenetrated markets is exactly where the real impact lies.
New risks, new cover
WTW has acquired Redefind, a UK platform which makes cryptocurrency and digital assets insurable.
Redefind uses cryptographic proof of ownership to establish what you actually hold, then covers the cost of recovery – forensic investigation, asset tracing, legal expenses – rather than the volatile value of the assets themselves.
With institutional crypto adoption accelerating, this is a broker buying its way into a category most of the market still can’t underwrite. Smart timing. Smart structure.
The ring goes public
A random one (and one I’m still keen to try out but haven’t moved over from Whoop) – Oura has confidentially filed for its IPO.
The interesting bit is the positioning: not a tech company but a healthcare company.
Over 5 million paid members, an $11bn valuation, FDA authorisation to study blood pressure detection, and half of its users now using the ring to help manage a chronic condition. Maybe it is a healthcare company after all.
For life and health insurers, this is the prevention and engagement data layer hitting public-market scale. The wearables conversation has been bubbling away for a decade; it’s now starting to grow up.
The Chicago-based business underwrites apartment buildings and condo associations using aerial imagery and AI rather than physical inspections, and now insures over $100bn in assets.
Commercial property is a tricky old market, so a specialist scaling a leaner, tech-led model is always worth watching.
The same data-led approach is of course also reshaping how climate risk gets priced.
Windward Risk Managers is deepening its work with ZestyAI, deploying the Z-FIRE model to support its move into the California homeowners market. Z-FIRE brings property-level wildfire intelligence into underwriting, using computer vision and machine learning to assess which homes are most vulnerable and which are likely to survive a fire event.
California is one of the toughest property markets on the planet right now. If better data can help insurers re-enter, price more accurately, or avoid blanket retreat, that’s got to be a very good thing.
On that note, Property Guardian and EigenRisk have also partnered to bring wildfire intelligence into EigenPrism, giving commercial property underwriters forward-looking wildfire insights directly within an existing analytics workflow.
Nice.
Emerging Trends Academy
Beyond the 2.0 rollout, we’ve been having some good conversations around the Emerging Trends Academy this week. A new venture we plan to launch in Sept/Oct.
They’re great fun and I’m thoroughly enjoying spending the time to both think about the week, but also get really stuck into some of the key industry narratives. There’s definitely no lack of openness, opinion, random chat. So good.
