Back to work with a bang. SO MUCH Sønr 2.0 planning. Testing. Iterating. It’s genuinely freaking brilliant and I’m loving it.
Let’s get into some news.
First up, Anthropic has filed to go public. I’m sure you’ve seen the numbers…
2024: lost $8bn.
2025: lost $42bn.
2026: pushing for a $1.5 to $2 trillion valuation. TRILLION.
The filing comes with nearly 100 pages of risks.
It says its technology could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”, and that misuse “in the domain of biology” could be worse still. Sure, okay.
Then, the bit for us.
After a catastrophic AI incident, “no single insurer, and potentially the insurance industry in the aggregate, may have sufficient capacity” to cover it. Oh. Right you are.
It’s something isn’t it. I love it. I see so much incredible potential. Beyond what we can imagine. But this side of it? It’s dark. Dark, dark, dark.
The $1.7bn pricing engine
On a much cheerier note – Guidewire has agreed to buy hyperexponential (hx) for $1.7bn in cash, with up to $400m more if hx hits its revenue targets. Which I am sure they will.
hx builds pricing and underwriting software for commercial insurers, with Aviva, Allianz, Sompo, Beazley and Markel among its customers. Its software sits behind more than $75bn of premium a year (hx’s own figure).
The deal should close by the end of January.
Pull up a chair in the chat
Last time, AI agents got a rulebook. This fortnight, insurers started moving in.
Verisk is taking its ISO data, the industry numbers a lot of US insurers price from, to where underwriters already work – good old Microsoft Copilot. And there’s more of it inside Claude, including a new connector for hail and wind history at property level.
A fortnight ago, Insurify was blocking Meta’s Muse. Now it’s letting AI agents in, on its own terms.
Its new AI Agent Gateway lets agents, including OpenAI’s Dots and Muse, pull live quotes from its 120+ carrier partners. But they come through Insurify’s front door, under its rules on consent and disclosure, before the buyer is handed to the carrier to bind.
So Insurify stays in the middle of the sale, which is where a comparison site makes its money.
In the UK, Ageas is offering esure car quotes inside ChatGPT. Answer a few questions in the chat, get a quote in minutes, then buy on esure’s own site.
And somebody has to referee all this.
Marrow, a London startup we’ve mentioned a few times now, has raised a $2m pre-seed, with InsurTech Gateway and Leo Capital among the backers.
Insurers plug in once, and Marrow sets the rules for the AI agents: what the customer has to see before a price, and a record of every interaction. It’s been live with Aviva since March.
It covers physical damage, third-party liability and the cost of a stand-in, human or robot, while one is out of action. Cyber losses are excluded. Nikkei reports premiums around 20% above standard industrial equipment cover.
Back to that Anthropic filing –Morningstar DBRS has spelled out two risks for insurers. If thousands of policyholders use the same AI model and it goes wrong, the claims all land at once. And AI claims could turn up under liability policies that were never priced for them. The industry calls that “silent AI”.
And the money behind AI wants cover too.
Bloomberg reports Barclays is asking insurers to take on credit risk across more than $10bn of loans to AI data centres, in some cases over half of it.
Less chat, more work
Our friends at Travelers have launched Upload & Go. Independent agents upload ACORD forms, other paperwork or even handwritten notes, and get a bindable workers’ comp quote in about half the usual time. Nice.
A simple but super valuable one – MS Amlin has rolled out a bot that checks reinsurance contracts against its underwriting standards, flagging missing clauses and inconsistencies before the 1 January renewals.
It was built with MSIG Asia, and the aim is to halve review times. That’s a target, not a result…yet. It’s also called Wordy Bot. Brilliant.
Finally, Ping An says AI now handles 82% of its customer service volume, and 95% of its life policies are underwritten within seconds.
Cover where you already bank
A couple of good ones this fortnight.
SoFi, trusted by 15.8m members, has put Prudential term life inside its app. Quote, apply and buy without leaving SoFi, often with no medical exam.
In the UK, Lloyds Banking Group has picked Superscript to sell business insurance to its small business customers, through Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland. Quote and buy online in minutes, instant proof of cover, and no admin fees for changes mid-term. It launches before the end of the year.
Money moves
AmTrust International has bought Wakam, less than five weeks after France’s regulator stopped it writing new business. Wakam, the French carrier built around embedded insurance, had dropped below its solvency requirement after writing down some older assets. It says it’s now fully capitalised and writing again. Wakam UK, regulated separately, wasn’t affected.
Symetra and TIAA have launched Mariner Re, a Bermuda reinsurer with $750m of TIAA equity, to fund Symetra’s annuity growth by taking a share of new business. It’s the latest in a run of these private-capital-backed vehicles for life and annuity writers.
Slingshot has come out of stealth with a decent $27m seed for software that runs operations for MGAs and embedded insurance programmes.
And the World Food Programme has become the first UN agency to buy parametric cover from CCRIF, the Caribbean disaster risk pool. Two tropical cyclone policies, for Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with a combined $11.6m limit.
If a storm hits the trigger, the money arrives fast enough to get food and cash to people sooner. Nice.
Em on what makes transformation stick
On Wednesday, our Director of Research, Emily Peters, joined Chris Samuel from iPipeline for an ITC London webinar on what makes technology transformation succeed in insurance.
She started with what we hear from insurers all the time. Roadmaps are full. Budgets are tighter. Everyone’s being asked to go faster. And too much gets stuck at pilot stage.
Her three lessons:
Be proactive, not reactive. Track how your market is changing, and learn to tell the real signals from the noise.
Be ruthless about accountability. Be clear on the outcome you want, use a manageable, gated approach, and be honest.
Don’t forget culture. Avoid tech-led decisions, and invest in your people.
A HUGE thank you to everyone on the Sønr 2.0 beta. The feedback has been amazing.
Now we want to go wider.
Over the next couple of weeks, we’d love to get it in front of claims teams, underwriting folk and other practitioners across the business, beyond strategy, corp dev and innovation.
People whose day job isn’t to look at this stuff.
Or not 100% of the time at least.
Unexpectedly, ish, it seems there’s a huge amount of value in what we’ve created for these teams too.
If you know someone who fits the above and is a good creative thinker, drop me a note. Better still forward this on to them 🙏
And if you’re already on beta, heads up, there’ll be some big, exciting changes next week. I’m travelling a chunk of it but will hopefully get some comms out.
As for the launch plan: we’re working towards a friends, family and Sønr clients release around 1st December, then a big public push in early January. Oh and Founding Members who join before the end of February lock their price for two years.
Two more asks.
If you’d be up for chatting through a few roadmap ideas, I’d love that.
And it needs a name! Still.
We’ve got a few front runners, so if you’re a branding or marketing person, or just enjoy the creative conversation, get involved.
Plus why he’d probably fire himself from a Fortune 500 company, and a quickfire round that was anything but quick. A great chat with one of the most beautiful and brilliant humans there is.
Who pays when hackers turn supermarket fridges into ovens? Plus Coverdash on Claude, Airbnb‘s rain cover, and the AI agent I’ve let loose on my Revolut account. With a spending cap.
Next Tuesday, I’m en route to Brussels to spend some time with MSIG Europe,
I’m stopping off at the Insurance Innovators Summit in London. If you’re about for a coffee, give me a shout.
The week after, it’s Protectors Vegas, 9 to 11 November at The Venetian. Sønr is an official partner and I’ve a feeling it’s going to be a great show.
Nige and I will be getting up to all sorts of Unfiltered mischief. I’ve also wangled an invite to the Sixfold and ServiceNow dinner which should be a great evening.
If you’re going, let me know.
Our Friends of Sønr VIP link gets you at least $200 off. If you’re VP or above in innovation, tech or product at a carrier, you could get in free.
–
That. Is. Me.
It’s Bears vs Tigers rugby tonight. My new team vs the old guard. Should be a good evening of spectating under the spotlights.
Have great weekends all.
As always, thanks for reading, and please share this with anyone who might be interested.
Until next time. Big love.
Matt
The world is changing faster than insurance. Sønr exists to close that gap.
Trusted by the world’s leading (re)insurers, brokers and innovators in over 60 countries to track what’s emerging, validate the opportunities worth backing, and act on it.
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