In 2018 I got invited to Vegas for ITC.
At the time, I had nothing to sell – just a platform still in stealth.
When I got there, I’d never felt such energy.
A community of thousands upon thousands of senior insurance folk committed to driving change across the industry.
I knew then if we were to truly scale the Sønr business, ITC would be the ultimate partner to enable us to do so.
This certainty only grew with the introduction of ITC Asia (Singapore) last year, which I was lucky enough to get to. And which was also exceptional.
And the certainty was absolute hearing about the launch of their new events – ITC LATAM (Miami) next month and ITC DIA Europe (Barcelona and Munich) in June and November, respectively.
For those who did attend Vegas last year, you may have clocked we worked with Bill and the team to pull together the ITC Vegas Compendium – the single directory of ALL the startups and scaleups attending the event. This was just the start of a very beautiful relationship.
Roll forward 6 months, and I’m proud to announce something I could only wish for 5 years back:
🚀🚀Sønr is officially the Global Market Intelligence Partner of ITC🚀🚀
There’s something really powerful about the combination of the two businesses.
ITC prides itself (my words, not theirs) on connecting tech entrepreneurs, investors, and insurance industry executives from across the globe and they do this at a scale second to none.
Sønr has built unparalleled intelligence on the innovation taking place across insurance, developing unique and critical insight into how markets are changing and which companies are driving that change.
Plans are afoot.
And they’re beyond exciting.
Sabine, thanks for the invite to Vegas all those years ago 🙏
Keep an eye out for the official press release next week. And I’ll share more in due course.
Now, not that they’ve asked for us to push this, but if you’re to head to any event this year, make sure it’s ITC. They’re going to be on another level. Plus, you’ll get to hang out with team Sønr.
Right, time for some updates from around the world.
Oh, and if you want to read more about SønrGPT, keep scrolling. It’s scarily impressive.
Embedded polar bears
I’m kicking off this week’s news with one of my favourite LinkedIn posts:
I knew Rob Schimek, bolttech’s CEO, got up to crazy Ironman stuff. I hadn’t realised he was roping his team into his (mis)adventures! Great to see. Love this stuff.
That said, it’s not all polar bear chasing for bolttech this week. They also announced a partnership with Pathpoint, a digital wholesaler for small commercial excess and surplus (E&S).
Pathpoint will integrate into Bolt Access, bolttech’s wholesale agency digital placement platform. Agents who use bolt Access to place small commercial insurance can now quote Pathpoint’s small commercial E&S in a complete digital experience. Nice.
Keeping with APAC…ish…and Cover Genius announced it has completed an agreement to acquire the assets of US-based embedded warranty provider Clyde Technologies.
The assets acquired will assist Cover Genius’ continued expansion into the medium-sized e-commerce world.
Closer to home, Belgium’s Qover, an embedded insurance platform, has announced it will provide its platform to various EV OEMs and car subscription platforms.
By reducing lengthy insurance processes, it hopes to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable and customer-centric future of driving. Good job Qover.
And finally, insurance technology provider Sure has launched Retrace – a solution for online merchants to provide customers with embedded one-click insurance and protection at the point of sale.
Retrace includes a suite of APIs to enable merchants to embed insurance and protection for various use cases of the likes of e-commerce returns, travel insurance, and product warranty protection at any point within the purchase flow.
Open innovation driving the future of mobility
Let’s start this one with some client news.
The newly created company Neodigital Autoversicherung AG will offer flexible and digital motor insurance solutions to new market segments and is well worth getting under the skin of.
Bias aside, this is a great example of industry collaboration to uncover new growth opportunities.
Another nice bit of innovation from YAS Mobility, a blockchain-powered drive-to-earn platform.
It has launched the beta version of its iOS app – available in selected markets across the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Like we’ve seen elsewhere, this app incentivises safe driving by encouraging good habits and records real-time driving data to determine driving patterns.
What we don’t often see is just how well executed it is. These guys do a great job when it comes to user experience and engagement.
On the funding side, Click-Ins has raised a $7.5m round.
The company intends on using the money to continue its growth and to expand and develop its automatic AI-based solution to accurately detect and assess all vehicle damage.
Its tech uses images taken from any mobile device, in real-time and eliminates a large amount of human bias, which can be present in damage assessment performed by a human.
The acquisition brings together two telematics companies with large and growing footprints in Europe. I imagine we’ll be seeing more of this over the coming months.
Mental health and aging ‘successfully’
Mental health and well-being is still one of the hottest topics across our health insurance clients. The global market is now being valued at $4.5bn and growing at a CAGR of 31.6%.
A couple of super interesting investments this week are with:
Helloself, a UK-based therapeutic health platform which raised $20m in a Series B.
The company aims to plug gaps in the provision of mental health care and digital therapeutic support. It provides users with personalised digital therapy services.
And Aiberry, which has raised $8m for its AI-powered software.
The tech analyses audio, visual, and language from a short three to five-minute conversation to screen for mental health conditions.
With this its dashboard provides a risk score for conditions including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Interesting, right?
Away from mental health on to aging ‘successfully’.
Assured Allies, a company for evidence-based successful ageing, has raised $42.5m in a Series B. The round was led by FinTLV Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the growth and expansion of its carrier and partner network. If you’re in this space, do check these guys out. Super interesting and kinda relevant to us all. Or at least it will be one day.
Saudi Arabian healthtech company Labayh has acquired Abu-Dhabi-based meditation app Nafas.
And healthcare platform for the self-employed in the United States, Transcarent, has acquired 98point6, including its almost 100-clinician physician group.
Parametric’s growing role in extreme weather cover
It’s great to see parametric insurance becoming more and more commonplace. Especially when accelerated by the adoption by the big incumbents.
One such is Munich Re Syndicate which has extended its partnership with flood insurer FloodFlash.
Munich Re estimated losses from the Atlantic storm season to be more than $100bn, including $56bn of insured losses, with hurricane Ian serving as the main contributor. That’s a lot of cash.
Up in Canada, Aviva has partnered with CelsiusPro to offer parametric excess rain coverage to its clients.
The new offering uses CelsiusPro’s White Label Platform (WLP) solution, which provides features including, data feeds, an online premium calculator, an offer & policy generator, quote and bind monitoring tools, an automatic settlement calculator, and a report creator. All the good stuff.
That platform is available in French and in English.
Actually, whilst on Canada (and nothing to with parametric) did you see Quebec’s Equisoft raised $125m in venture equity? These guys are big in the life and wealth space.
Other news from around the world
I found this one interesting.
Azur Group, a UK-based insurtech that provides digital products and services to brokers, has agreed to sell its technology services business to its senior managers, supported by angel investors.
The new company will be called Azur Technology and will develop new digital systems for underwriters and brokers. So far, the terms of the deal have not been made public.
The deal follows the sale of Azur Group’s underwriting business to Aviva last year.
And Insurify has entered into an agreement to acquire Inspop USA, LLC and its subsidiary, Compare.com Insurance Agency.
The transaction is expected to close in H1 2023.
This strategic acquisition brings two leading online insurance shopping platforms under one larger scale entity that combines Insurify’s AI-powered technology and Compare.com’s insurance experience.
Compare.com was founded by and is majority owned by yet another Sønr client – Admiral Group plc.
Welcome to SønrGPT
Now, we all agree ChatGPT is a proper game changer. Right?
So, the question we asked ourselves internally is just how we can make it even more powerful and useful for the insurance world.
Well, the answer is, you let it loose on a unique data set. A data set which is categorically the most comprehensive across insurance innovation globally.
The result: welcome to SønrGPT.
This is still in the Sønr Lab at the mo but I cannot freaking wait to roll this out.
If you’re already a client and want to work with us on developing this, please do get in touch. We’d love it.
Equally, if you’re not a client and want to know more, drop me a line.
Sønr’s shortlisted for NewTech Awards
We’ve never been a company to enter awards, but for 2023 we’re going to change that up.
Our first entry to date is into the much-esteemed Qorus Capgemini NewTech Awards.
The good news is we’re a shortlisted finalist 🚀🚀
And this is where we need your help. The winner is decided by public votes, which takes just 2 minutes.
Lloyd’s Lab Pitch Day
Finally, if you are in London this week, it is Pitch Day for Lloyd’s Lab Cohort 10 on Thursday, 23rd March. Sign up here to attend.
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That’s it from me.
Drop me a line if you’d like to connect and explore working together.
Sønr helps (re)insurers around the world connect with best in class investment, acquisition and partnership opportunities.
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