Olympics, insurance ecosystems and spacetech

Hello.

Simone Biles.
Léon Marchand.
The ‘assassin’ from Turkey.

I am LOVING the Olympics.

Sadly though work seems to be getting in the way 🤷

Although what’s the Mark Twain quote…“Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. Something like that!

This week we’ve been hatching exciting plans with Travelers for ITC Vegas (more soon), judging the Insurance Times Tech and Innovation Awards, to sharing some early findings from our Open Innovation study with InsurTechNZ.

Plus, this week, I got to catch up with a few of the folk from WPA – one of our first ever clients and a team that (over the 7 years!) have become great friends!

Why did the satellite win the gold medal in gymnastics?
It had perfect aerial manoeuvres.

Apologies, I couldn’t resist. No more Olympics chat, I promise.

I’m going to start the ball rolling with spacetech.

Perceptive Space has raised $2.8m to develop a space weather platform. Just brilliant.

Bringing it a little closer to home, AXA has unveiled a first-of-its-kind parametric heatwave insurance for outdoor workers and Aon has renewed its partnership with Columbia University to enhance research on the correlation of climate risk between various perils and regions. Nice.

Building ecosystems

A couple of interesting ecosystem plays in the traveller/gig worker space.

Insured Nomads, a leading global provider of health insurance has partnered with Global Nomad Pass to offer exclusive discounts to travellers, remote workers, and digital nomads.

The collab aims to encourage their customers to support local businesses – restaurants, bars, co-living spaces etc and enhance the travel experience while driving additional revenue to these merchants. Nice, although a tricky one to scale I imagine.

And a newbie on the block – Gigasure has announced its official launch with travel, backpackers, and car hire excess insurance. I wish them luck.

Keeping with travel and Faye has secured a $31m Series B to further evolve its travel insurance tech.

I like these guys. They combine travel insurance, assistance while you are away from home, and a mix of financial solutions, all packaged in a smartphone app.

Tackling deepfakes with book recommendations

A few weeks back I mentioned the work Sønr’s research team has been doing for various clients in the deepfake space. All super interesting and terrifying in equal measures.

This week I read how the CEO of Ferrari was impersonated on a call.

It was mid-morning on a Tuesday earlier this month when a Ferrari NV exec received a bunch of unexpected messages, seemingly from the CEO.

The voice on the other side of the call was an audio clone of Benedetto Vigna using deepfake tools. And it very nearly worked.

Luckily the exec picked up on it not sounding quite right and, apologising, said “Sorry, Benedetto, but I need to identify you”. He then went on to ask the title of the book Benedetto Vigna had just recommended to him a few days earlier. Naturally, this is where the call unravelled and ended.

Amazing, right? And something we’ll no doubt be seeing more of.

On that note, if you’d like to speak to Sønr’s research team and explore the implications, innovators and opportunities, get in touch here.

Kinda related and Inscora has raised a CAD $2m Pre-Seed round this week.

Inscora’s platform offers brokers a next-gen cyber insurance brokerage tool. In theory it does all the good stuff – accurately assess a company’s cyber risk, support clients in adopting cybersecurity best practices, and speeds up the cyber insurance application process.

Lloyd’s, Lloyd’s and a bit of Zurich

What else do I have to share?

On the incumbent side, great to see Zurich Australia partners with Tesla to provide exclusive electric vehicle insurance.

The company plans to focus on hull, cargo, and marine liability coverages, enhancing its portfolio and market presence​.

And finally, whilst on Lloyd’s, it’s Pitch Day for Cohort 13 of the Lloyd’s Lab is coming up on 10th September.

If you’re in London, get yourself along in person.
If you’re not, then you can also join virtually.

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Right, that is me. Done.

A big thanks to all those from the world of tech and consulting who have trialled the new version of Sønr. It’s great to welcome so many new clients 🙏.

If you’d like to explore the platform (and you fit the above!), drop me a line.

If you’d like to explore the platform (and you don’t fit the above), I’d still love to hear from you. We’re starting to work with a number of our clients on 2025 planning and would love to include you in the mix.

Have good weekends all and I hope the sun is shining wherever in the world you may be.

Matt

Sønr helps insurers source and connect with best in class investment, acquisition and partnership opportunities. It works with nearly 50 insurers around the world – including Generali, Travelers, WTW, RGA, QBE and Tokio Marine.

It combines a SaaS market intelligence platform, which tracks 3+ companies globally, with a team of researchers, analysts and consultants, which is available on demand 24/7. It also hosts a suite of innovation management tools designed for teams to better collaborate and track scouting, PoCs and investment activity.

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