A week of no travel.
The sun has been shining.
All pretty dreamy.
Welcome to SøNws all.
There’s a definite spring in the insurance step at the moment.
Funding is up.
M&A is kicking off.
And our clients are HUNGRY for market intel.
Mostly for tech/innovation trends (as always) but also competitor playbooks. Plus there’s a LOT of scouting being requested. And a lot of company deep-dives.
It feels good.
It feels like the industry is ready and wanting change.
Most interesting within all this?
For me, probably the breadth of what we’re being asked to look into.
From Ethical AI to BESS to Femtech to Smart Pest Control 🤷
47 different trends/sectors analysed in 2025 alone 😬
If you’d like to get a better sense of what our data on 4M+ companies is telling, what the wider industry is looking at, and where your next investment acquisition partnership opportunity lies, drop us a line.
Right, let’s get into what is a fairly chunky bit of market news.
Life, Health and ‘Digital Parenting’
Let’s kick off with M&A and COVU has acquired CIII Insurance Services – a boutique agency based in California. From what I’ve read there’ll be more acquisitions to come.
On investment, Bestow has raised a $120m Series D,
Originally a D2C life insurer, Bestow pivoted in 2024 – selling its insurance business to Sammons Financial Group – so it could focus exclusively on providing digital infrastructure to other life insurers. Seems like it was a smart move.
And a couple of partnership plays.
MetLife has come together with Aura – a business I think is super interesting and relevant in today’s world, to offer a new service empowering employees to protect their families from the mental health and physical harm of the online world.
The product combines Aura’s tools – like identity theft protection, financial fraud monitoring, and parental controls, with MetLife’s employee benefits offering. Nice.
Finally, MediHelp International, big across Poland Hungary, and Romania, has officially gone live with CoverGo’s next-gen, end-to-end health insurance platform.
The plan is to redefine health insurance operations across multiple European markets. Look forward to seeing this play out.
Ships, Parametric and Climate
Same format.
A couple of acquisitions.
Arch Insurance Company is set to acquire the policy forms, IP, and distribution rights for Plover Parametrics’ securities class action parametric insurance product.
Founded in 2022, Plover Parametrics is a specialty brokerage and general agent helping agents and brokers offer parametric insurance solutions for natural catastrophes, severe weather, and other emerging risks.
The other is Asuene, a Japan-based climate technology provider which has acquired NZero, a US startup specialising in real-time energy data and emissions tracking. Both super interesting businesses.
The deal strengthens Asuene’s expansion into the US Greentech and corp sustainability markets.
On the raising funds side, Orca AI has landed a $72.5m Series B. These guys have built an AI-based operational platform for ships.
Kovr.ai, an AI-native cyber compliance automation platform, has exited stealth with $3.6m in seed funding.
And Tinubu – a provider of cloud-based enterprise software – has secured $45m in growth capital.
It’s all happening in specialty – a space we’re already seeing a lot of new clients from and I’ve a feeling there’ll be plenty of interest in for a good few years.
On that note, make sure you don’t miss this one.
As you might know, Sønr sponsors the Camelot Innovation Hour.
Tune in: 30th May 9-10am (BST)
Neil Kempston is the Head of Incubation Underwriting at Beazley. A good pal, super interesting guy, and as a business they’ve done great stuff in the IVF, parametric and crypto spaces to name a few.
Embedded Asia
A quick Asia spotlight.
Zopper, one of India’s big embedded players, has raised $25 million in growth capital.
Within some of their numbers, what I really loved was the image below. Most aim for Unicorn status. Zopper is all about the elephant.
On the partnership side, great to see Sumitomo Corporation connecting up with Bolttech. Congrats to both sides of that one.
Cars, AI and Storage
As always, hats off to team Gallagher Re for their quarterly insurtech report.
Global InsurTech funding surged 90.2% quarter on quarter to $1.31bn
61.2% of Q1’25 InsurTech deals went to AI-centered companies ($710.86m)
5 (re)insurance investors made 3 or more tech investments in Q1’25
Also, great to see they’re zooming in on a particular line of business for each – this time around it was auto/motor for personal and commercial business. On that note, there’s a super interesting deep-dive into Inaza which is worth a read if you’re in this space.
Related, kinda, is one other bit of market news.
Insure Alert and Claim Technology have launched a real-time Motor Storage Database set to save insurers £100m+ annually by automating alerts, damage assessment, and routing for stored vehicles.
Nice.
One to Watch
I couldn’t find a natural home for this one but wanted to make sure it got a mention.
Dutch AI startup MarvelX is building what it calls a new AI-powered “operating system” for insurance.
The Amsterdam-based startup aims to automate up to 90% of insurance operations using AI agents, beginning with claims processing. Interesting huh? So much they’ve just raised a $6m Seed.
If you’ve not come across it, it’s on June 17–18 in Columbus Ohio.
I caught up with one of the Scout founders, Chris Luiz a couple of weeks back and it sounds great – a ‘marketplace’ style event with a real focus on creating connections. Love it.
And by the looks of it, a bunch of interesting brands already attending:
As you may have seen from socials, we’ve launched Beyond Boundaries 2025 — Sønr’s flagship end-of-year report exploring the forces reshaping global insurance.
This year’s edition dives into the key trends, emerging tech, and changing corporate innovation landscape, brought to life through interviews with leaders from top insurers and the wider ecosystem.
Plus we’ll be putting out a Top 50 ranking for both established and emergent insurtech. Application form will be available from Tuesday next week.
