It is hard to sip from a firehose and the InsurTech innovation pipeline in 2017 is a major gusher. As we parse this week’s news stories, one theme jumps out and this theme goes a long way to explain why the InsurTech innovation pipeline is such a gusher.
The theme is globalization.
5 InsurTech stories this week illustrate the globalization theme:
Digital Fine Print goes from Seed to Asia via America and London
Australian insurer IAG establishes an Insurtech hub in Singapore
Youse is the very first Brazilian InsurTech brand
The first InsurTech conference in Quebec City
The first InsurTech VC fund in flyover country
Digital Fine Print goes from Seed to Asia via America and London
The news: the story broke on CrowdFund Insider. This one is as global as it gets. An American Insurance Company (MetLife) partners with an early stage London based InsurTech startup (Digital Fine Print) to move into Asia.
This story also shows the capital efficiency value of Incumbent partnerships and social media. Digital Fine Print is going into Asia having raised only $400k. Conventional wisdom was that you should wait until your $400m round before going global. However if you can use the back end platform of an incumbent and use social media at the front end, it is time to challenge that conventional wisdom. (Daily Fintech is totally global, with subscribers in 130 countries and we have not yet raised any outside capital).
Australian insurer IAG establishes an Insurtech incubator in Singapore
The news: It will be called Firemark Labs and was reported in multiple venues, here is one. IAG = Insurance Australia Group. It underwrites over $11.4 billion of premium per annum and is active in many Asian countries. The incubator (do we call them “hubs” or accelerators today?) has the usual job of scouting for innovation.
Score another one for Singapore – see here for our story about CXA. This story also illustrates the value brought by the very proactive Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and its Chief FinTech Officer, Sopnendu Mohanty.
This is an inter Asia story – no American or European ventures. The Australia Singapore nexus makes sense as the Australian economy is tied to Asia.
The Incubator has access to cash through IAG’s $ 75 million venture fund.
The trend looks clear. MetLife already has an active Singapore-based innovation center called LumenLab. One can envisage each global insurance company having an InsurTech incubator in the 20 or more global cities with an active Fintech scene.
Youse is the first Brazilian InsurTech brand
The news: It is really only a “we are here” announcement with a lot of big picture data about how big InsurTech is.
Youse was created by Grupo Caixa Seguradora as a digital venture within a big company. We have seen some of these become successful in banking (see our Pirates With Ties interview series for some good success stories), even though cultural mismatch kills most intrapreneurial ventures.
Nubank in banking is a Brazilian specific example of a digital Neobank (but VC funded unlike Youse).
The first InsurTech conference in Quebec City
The news: InsurtechQC is the first conference dedicated to Insurtech in Quebec City. It takes place on April 3rd and has both local and international speakers.
The first InsurTech VC fund in flyover country
I know, I know, I should not refer to flyover country. It’s an old habit from living in New York and flying a lot to California. It sounds elitist and I apologize for that. The significant trend is that the Silicon Valley model of innovation has gone global and global does not just mean places like London, Zurich and Singapore. It also means places like Des Moines, Iowa.
The news: A Des Moines, Iowa-based VC fund called ManchesterStory Group backed by a consortium of insurance companies is looking for Insurtech deals.
“The new firm said it cannot disclose the insurance carriers behind it until the fund closes.”
They have company in Des Moines. The Global Insurance Accelerator was launched in 2013 with backing from seven insurance companies and has since added 3 more.
Closer to mainstream customers and lower cost base sound like good ingredients for venture success.
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