I’ve spent the last week in the Dolomites, at To The Peak.
My goodness it was pretty.
A thousand founders and investors from 21 countries, sponsored, in part, by team Generali. And barely anyone there from insurance (except Danilo and Giorgio – good to see you guys!). Dreamy.
Finanz won the startup competition. Milan-based. Think Duolingo for financial advice with 250,000 users already.
One I loved was Serwas, from Innsbruck. They put liquid-cooled servers inside buildings, sell the compute (within minutes of advertising it 🤯), and reuse up to 98% of the waste heat. The example presented was heating a local swimming pool.
You’d never see either at an insurtech event. Not for a good few years.
Then I sat down to write this edition of SøNws – Allianz + Waymo. AXA + Publicis Sapient + ByteDance. Acrisure + Palantir. Prudential + Alibaba.
Not one partnering with an insurtech.
It’s finally happening. We’re moving beyond the echo chamber.
And I’m excited for this next chapter.
It’s something we’ve baked into Sønr from Day 1. From the cross-industry data we collate, to the tech trends we track, to the research topics and advisory we explore. For me, it’s always been a must.
Right, it’s time. Let’s get into it.
Ten years away, signed on Wednesday
On Tuesday, the chief exec of HUK-COBURG, Germany’s largest motor insurer, told a room in Hamburg that autonomous driving was coming but probably not for a good ten years.
Then, on Wednesday, Allianz announced a partnership with Waymo.
Insurance, digital claims and vehicle recovery, plus joint safety research running through the Allianz Center for Technology. The cover itself ranges from motor fleet to multinational liability to policies written for autonomous platforms.
And whilst that’s all taking place, Waymo names London and Munich as its first European deployments, with Munich commercial around late 2027.
So maybe we won’t be waiting the ten years after all. Let’s see.
An AI KPI
AXA has also been making some noise these past few weeks.
On the 8th, a global AI hub built with Publicis Sapient. The first version shipped back in July and now runs across five entities, handling motor claims automation, customer email processing and enterprise knowledge management.
Two days later AXA Hong Kong and Macau signed an MOU with BytePlus, ByteDance’s enterprise arm, covering insurance-specific models and agents, predictive analytics and a generative AI creativity hub. Interesting right? I definitely need to look into this one more.
Then on the 15th, the strategic plan.
Growing Forward runs 2027 to 2029, and commits AXA to €500m to €700m in annual pre-tax benefits (efficiencies and better margins) from AI by 2029. It runs through submission triage, pricing across P&C and health, underwriting decision support, automated claims and contact centres. Huge.
Three years of pilots, and this is the first tier-one carrier (I think!) that has put a value and a date in the same announcement.
Acrisure’s new OS
Another biggie.
Acrisure launched Auris AI, built with Palantir, running across 19 countries and connecting client, carrier, contract and operational data to live workflows.
They’re sensibly calling it an operating system rather than a tool. Tools were so last year, right?
I guess you don’t bring in Palantir to build a dashboard.
The vendor that wants to cost less
Peak3 launched two things on Tuesday. As with anything from these guys, both worth an explore.
Graphene v4 is the new AI-native version of its core platform. Agents move from running the business to changing it, reconfiguring products, calculations and rules from documents and plain-language prompts. Work that took days gets executed in minutes.
All super cool, but Graphene Harness is the really interesting one.
Peak3 took its most experienced delivery staff and built digital twins of every role – business analyst through to reviewer, running as a governed virtual scrum team across requirements, build, test, migration and maintenance.
The architecture underneath is headless, so every capability sits behind APIs, MCP and CLI and an agent works on the core directly rather than driving a screen. Attribution and logging enforced in code.
Then the numbers.
Peak3 says it has already halved end-to-end development and implementation cost where Harness runs, and it’s chasing 80% within 18 to 36 months. Both figures come from its own internal use, mind, and no client gets their hands on Harness for another six to twelve months.
Bill Song says they’re disrupting themselves, moving from selling software and services to selling the production line that builds it. Again, a super smart move.
In theory an insurer running Harness owns the means of changing its own core, rather than depending on the vendor’s delivery team. Interesting few months ahead to see whether that proves out.
Alibaba in the mix
A quick one on these guys.
Prudential Hong Kong has built an AI underwriting assistant with Alibaba Cloud, turning preliminary indications around in minutes rather than days.
It reports accuracy above 95%, with underwriters keeping the final call.
Nice.
Feeding the models
Sompo Japan has signed ICEYE for Flood Insights, giving building-level views of inundation (ah, the words we learn) within hours of a typhoon rather than waiting on assessors.
In other news, EigenRisk has pulled GeoX property intelligence into EigenPrism, adding AI-derived attributes for 186 million US properties. And Agero has partnered with MOTER to bring connected vehicle data into claims.
Satellites, aerial imagery and telematics, all pointed at the same problem. What a world we live in.
And briefly
Zurich and Beazley have cleared the last approval. Court on the 22nd, effective 1 October, £8.1bn, roughly $15bn of combined specialty premium.
Beazley called the earlier £7.67bn approach materially undervalued. Looks like they weren’t wrong.
A good one, as ever. Congratulations to all involved.
No sore head this morning either – drinking seems to be a thing of the past at the moment. And probably best – this was my room last night!
On a WhatsApp group I’m in, one of the chaps regularly posts about the capsules he stays in when in London. I’ve been dying to try them. So good. Think airplane meets youth hostel meets camping.
Two from Unfiltered
This morning Big Nige and I filmed a brilliant Unfiltered with the very talented Arslan Hannani, Chief Innovation Officer at Aviva. Out in the coming days.
In the meantime, my gift to you is two episodes:
1. What a Time to Be Alive Recorded straight off the back of the Dolomites. Me with sunburn and Nigel having spent his week mowing the lawn.
Sovereign AI across the US, China and Europe. The calls from Dario, Sam and Elon to slow things down, and why CrowdStrike suggests cyber can’t afford to. Bending Spoons buying Miro. Sir Tom Jones and Ed Sheeran somehow ending with insurance getting the blame.
The origin story, why Vegas actually works, the neighbourhood concept, how they’re using AI, and what happens backstage when things go wrong. Billy Idol, Salt-N-Pepa and the Goo Goo Dolls all feature.
Nigel was there before the beginning. I turned up a year later.
Right, I’m done. Temple Meads is here.
Writing this on the train back to Bristol, so forgive any brevity/misspellings/too much random chat.
Next week may be Singapore. I’m still not 100% whether I can make it and a BIG thanks to George Kesselman who has said yes to standing in. And then it’s Vegas Baby! Really looking forward to that one.
For now, have great weekends.
Big love, Matt
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