The Corporate Venture Capital-as-a-Service Influencer

Who Can Do InsurTech? Who Should? | The Intersection - The Insurance-Canada.ca Blog

The term “InsurTech”  is a bit ambiguous, describing a wide scope of activities.  Depending on the source, InsurTech  may cause disruption of current insurance practices, the rise of new insurance products, the evisceration  of entire insurance C-Suites, the ascension of new entrepreneurs to Unicorn status.  This is not particularly helpful.

I prefer to use a basic construct from Investopedia: “Insurtech refers to the use of technology innovations designed to squeeze out savings and efficiency from the current insurance industry model.”

In simple terms, it is a version of process improvement.  The difference is that InsurTech takes away manual or semi-automated activities and redefine the process map with technology.

Who is doing InsurTech?

If I were just reading the current trade press, I would believe that InsurTech was the exclusive domain of  1,000+ start-ups which opened their doors post 2014, and are plotting a route to Unicorn land.

There is some truth here, but not all…

One of the first applications of InsurTech came well before the definition of the term.  In the mid-1990s, Progressive Insurance began developing a device to send vehicle data to the insurer, which could record the use of vehicles for purposes of underwriting and rating.

Over the next two decades, Progressive fine-tuned the technology and the approach.  It is now the ‘Snapshot’ product.  A number of other insurers world-wide have adopted the general approach and exploited the technology to change the automobile business model.

What the new entrants are doing…

New entrants to insurance are moving quickly and are poised to make a substantial difference in how we do insurance and Insurance Technology.

For example, MetroMile – a recognized InsurTech leader – established itself in 2009 to use the same devices as Progressive, but to focus exclusively on the electronic data and analytic tools.

Other InsurTech leaders – including Slice, Trov, Lemonade – have leveraged technology to optimize underwriting and rating targets and eliminate redundancies and manual handling.

This is the disruptive side.  But established insurers are not ignoring the lessons the start-up are teaching.

How can insurers ‘buy in’?

There are several well-publicized examples in Canada.  Here are two.

• Aviva Canada has had a digital program going for several years.  Ben Isotta-Riches, Aviva’s Canadian CIO, told attendees at the 2016 Insurance-Canada Executive Forum that the objective is to effect a cultural shift to compete with ‘born-digital’ competitors.  Aviva just recently opened a ‘Digital Garage’ in downtown Toronto, modeled after similar facilities in London and Singapore.
• Economical Insurance introduced Sonnet, a new underwriting subsidiary company, which is focused on direct to consumer distribution of personal lines b

via insurance-canada.ca

Helvetia launches venture fund for investments in Insurtech start-ups | Fintech News

Helvetia Insurance is launching its own venture fund for investments in start-ups at the beginning of 2017. The newly established Digital Ventures department, part of Corporate Development, will be responsible for the fund. Corporate Development will be headed by Martin Tschopp.

Helvetia Insurance is launching the Helvetia Venture Fund at the beginning of 2017 to help drive forward digitisation. The fund invests systematically in start-ups which are contributing to the digital transformation of Helvetia’s existing core business, thus facilitating targeted business model innovations. Around CHF 55 million will be invested in approximately 25 young companies over the next few years. Helvetia will set up a fund management company in Luxembourg for this purpose.

Focus on insurtech and start-ups that link to the business

The fund pursues strategic and financial goals. On the one hand, it will focus on insuretech start-ups. These are young companies active in the traditional value chain of an insurer. On the other hand, it will invest in start-ups whose business models link to Helvetia’s business. Helvetia aims for operational cooperation with all start-ups. The investments are therefore made primarily in countries in which Helvetia operates, i.e. Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Spain.

“The Helvetia Venture Fund will make a substantial contribution to the successful implementation of the helvetia 20.20 strategy. In order to make use of business model innovations, we want to invest in the appropriate start-ups and work together with them,” explains Philipp Gmür, Group CEO of Helvetia.

Cooperation with b-to-v

Helvetia is working together with b-to-v Partners AG, based in St.Gallen, in the venture capital sector. The Helvetia Venture Fund will thus benefit from the start-up deal flow and the experience of b-to-v. However, the investment decisions will be taken by Helvetia. This allows for the necessary agility, lean processes and short decision-making routes for all investments.

New Corporate Development division for efficient strategy implementation

The Helvetia Venture Fund is part of the Digital Ventures department in the Corporate Development function. This new function will support the efficient implementation of the helvetia 20.20 strategy and will also group and drive forward the company-wide initiatives and programmes. Corporate Development reports directly to Philipp Gmür, Group CEO of Helvetia. Martin Tschopp, who is joining Helvetia as of the first quarter of 2017, will take over as Head of Corporate Development.

Martin Tschopp has worked at UBS since 2012 and since 2015 held the role of Chief Operating Officer for Asset Management Switzerland. The 52-year-old worked at Swiss Life between 2006 and 2011 and left the company as CEO in Luxembourg. His career began in 1990 as a consultant at Andersen Consulting Switzerland. From here, he moved to

via www.fintechnews.org

#Insurtech and Customer Services Global Industry Trends, Share & forecast to 2020

Summary

The emergence of insurtech has been fueled by new digital capabilities and Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are reducing costs, changing systems and processes, and enhancing the consumer experience. From an industry burdened by outdated systems and paper-based operations, the insurtech space has emerged as one of the largest innovation ecosystems globally in 2017, and is set to modernize the industry in the years going forward. It has taken a while for banks and insurance firms to fully embrace fintech innovation, due in part to the amount of legacy systems in place, the heavy dependence on historical data, and the low risk appetite for new insurance-related products at most traditional firms. However, rapidly changing customer behavior, the availability of smart devices, and innovation ecosystems achieving scale provided the industry with a much-needed push in 2017 (and beyond) to adopt insurtech in a huge way.

 

Request a Sample Report @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/872191-insurtech-and-customer-services-lessons-for-the-incumbents

 

Key Findings

- Consumer behavior has shifted to accentuate the sharing economy, and the products/platforms that best encompass these new behavior patterns are likely to be the most successful.

- One of the largest emerging areas within insurtech in 2017 was the development of apps and devices that monitor how consumers behave and make purchases, mainly driven through IoT.

- Policy management is a key theme stemming from most new insurtech developments, enabling consumers to personally manage and take more control of their insurance dealings.

- Start-ups are encouraging consumers to move away from traditional insurance practices through the introduction of peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, where liabilities and risks are managed by the individual(s) instead of the insurer.

 

Synopsis

“Insurtech and Customer Services: Lessons for the Incumbents” provides an in-depth analysis of recent developments in the insurtech space and the impact on the insurance industry. The report discusses how mainstream insurers are embracing new technology and how these new innovations could revolutionize many of the long-standing systems and processes within general insurance. It also looks at how insurers could benefit from the types of propositions offered by these new tech groups and the opportunities that may exist in the form of partnerships.

 

Reasons to Buy

- Gain a detailed insight into the insurtech space.

- Discover how insurtech is benefitting mainstream providers, and also the potential limitations.

- Be informed of the insurers investing in the technology and those looking to develop new digital/tech-based propositions.

 

Buy now @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=872191

 

Table of Contents

EXEC

via prsync.com

10 Predictions for #Insurtech in 2017 - Insurance Thought Leadership

Photo Courtesy of Pexels

It’s time to reflect on the passing year, mark my predictions from last year and throw some light on what I see 2017 holding in store.

In my post from this time last year, I made a number of predictions, so, now, I wanted to look at how I did. Feel free to jump in and see how close to the mark I was and share your perspectives.

Reviewing 2016 — How did I do?

1. Fintech and insurtech.  In last year’s piece, I said that 2015 was the year of the zone, loft, garage and accelerator and that this would continue in 2016 with more focus. Regarding fintech and insurtech, I was right. We have seen some heavyweight investment (more so in the U.S. and Asia) and no major failures, to my knowledge. Trending up. Points: 1. 

2. Evolution of IoT. In 2015, I wrote, “2016 will be the year we all realize (IoT) is just another data/automated question set.” Evolution here is continuing, but not at the pace I expected. New firms such as Concirrus (and many others) have come up with some great examples of managing and leveraging the ecosystem. Points 2.

3. Digital and data. At the end of last year, I said 2016 would continue to be a big area of growth for both. There’s been progress, yes, and pace and traction ahead of what’s expected. Points 3.

4. M&A will continue but will slow. I think this has slowed this year, with two of the three major regions in the latter half of the year focused on Brexit and the U.S. election. Now, folks are trying to work out where that leaves fintech/insurtech. Points 4.

5. Will the CDO Survive? I said I thought we’d see a move back to the chief customer officer. Well, no sign of my chief customer officers yet! (Although, after writing this, I came across three chief customer officers, so it’s a start). Have you ever asked an insurance company or people inside the company “who owns the customer?” To me, we’re still product-centric rather than customer-centric. Points 4.

6. New business models. I said last year that we’d need to be clear on what the new business model will be — and what it needs to be. This year, there’s been lots of talk in this area, including here at Deloitte in our Turbulence Ahead report. We identified four business models for the future: 1) Individualization of insurance, 2) Off-the-shelf insurance, 3) Insurance as utilities and, finally, 4) Insurance as portfolio. It may take longer for this to materialize, but, without doubt, these models are coming. See my colleague Emma Logan describe th

via insurancethoughtleadership.com

The #Insurtech #VC = happy to see @AXAVentures as No1 (@Minh_Q_Tran) and No2 (@FGraillot) as Insurance's top 100 Individual Influencers on Twitter

Qualifying As A Twitter Influencer In Insurance

To compile my list of influencers I required the following criteria:

• Had to be an individual (not a company or brand account)
• Had to have at least 1,000 followers
• Had to have tweeted in the last 30 days
• 1 to 1 follower ratio or higher (more followers than followed)
• Had to have at least a relevancy score of 30/100 or higher in insurance (aka they talk about insurance).

I was surprised when these limitations initially only brought back 83 insurance influencers. I had to dig deeper to find the last 17 influencers in order to compile a complete list of 100 influencers.

I’ve created a few twitter influencer lists for different industries, but this is the first time I had to stretch myself to hit a 100 influencers. Usually, I have to make dramatic cuts to bring down my list. However, this time I had to use additional tools to find my 100 influencers. Though it was more work it did help me gain deeper insights into the insurance industry, but I’ll save those for another time.

When I told my friend that I had finished my insurance influencer list he asked if Warren Buffett was #1 on the list. I was actually surprised that Mr. Buffett hadn’t emerged in my data dragging.

When I viewed his profile I saw why.

With 1.5 Million followers there is no doubt Warren Buffett is an influencer. If my sole criteria were followers he would be the king. However, from past experience I’ve learned a large following is a poor indicator of influence.

In fact, I am a firm believer of Tim Soulo’s philosophy that 100 true twitter followers will beat out a million non-engaged followers every single time. I’m not saying that having a large following isn’t important, but as a stand alone metric on influence it doesn’t quite show the whole picture.

Warren Buffett could be a powerful insurance influencer on Twitter, but if you look at his account you will see that he has only tweeted a few times and none of his tweets even mention insurance. Hence why he didn’t make my list.

How Influence Was Determined

Once, I was able to find my 100 influencers, my next step was determining just how influential they were. One of the best free twitter tools in determining this is Twitonomy. The free version of this tool is robust and it helped me nail down my metrics.

I ultimately decided that activity, frequency, and engagement were the best indicators of influence. So, I narrowed my data point to these five categories:

• Followers – Total amount of account followers
• Tweets – Total amount of tweets
• Tweets Per Day – Average number of tweets posted each day
• Tweets Retweeted – Percentage of the user’s tweets retweeted by others
• Average Retweets – Average number of tweets retweeted by others

At the beginning, I also had data on the average number of tweets liked by others, but I found there was zero change in the rankings with this data point. In fact, you can interchange the data on average retweets and average likes and not have a single ranking change. I’ve concluded that the average number of tweets retweeted by others strongly correlates with the average number of tweets liked.

With these final data points set I then weighted them, because each category is not equally important in understanding influence. Total tweets had the lowest weight (“I tweet therefore I am influential” isn’t necessarily the case); whereas the percentage of the tweets retweeted by others had the highest weight (more tweets retweeted by others means people like what they’re seeing).

As you will see with the below list, having a large following does matter (six out of the top 10 influencers have some of the biggest followings). Yet, the most influential, like Minh Q. Tran (#1) and Florian Graillot (#2), have less than half the followers as Colin Halliday (#7) and Stuart Ganis (#8).

If you look at the percentage of people who retweet Minh’s tweets (65.77%) and Florian’s tweets (65.24%) you will see that they handily beat Colin’s (16.34%) and Stuart’s (4.13%) reach.

Final Thoughts On Judging Criteria

One last word on the list. Some might wonder why I added the other three categories (total amount of tweets; average tweets a day; and average tweets retweeted by others). Initially, I did look at just followers and reach, but I found some accounts that met the requirements but rarely engaged their base.

I personally feel that a truly powerful influencer is someone who is actively interacting with their community. You may receive 70,367 total retweets on only seven tweets like Mr. Buffett, but when you compare this to Mr. Tran’s 60,649 retweets * on 8,745 tweets, it won’t take Mr. Tran long to have a similar reach, but with more interactions.

My takeaway from this is that it’s possible to be as influential on Twitter as someone like Warren Buffett, but it requires more quality, volume, and consistency in engagement to make it happen.

In the end, compiling this list helped me understand that the insurance industry is still in its infancy on Twitter. The data isn’t as nearly as hearty as you see in other financial industries like banking or investing.

In fact, most industries have influencers with hundreds of thousands followers and a deep reach. With an obvious void of leadership (at least among individuals) one has to ask if insurance is behind the times or just doesn’t have a strong enough devotion to drive interest (or both)?

Insurance’s Top 100 Individual Influencers on Twitter

Without further ado here’s my top influencer list for insurance. I’ve also provided a key to understand the data I used to judge the influencers. I’ve intentionally left out my exact data weights to make it harder to game the list for future aspiring insurance influencers :).

 

SIGN-UP for our newsletter and receive an excel sheet with all the data we collected on 100 Twitter insurance influencers.

TABLE KEY
Ranking	Influencer ranking from 1-100
Followers	Total amount of account followers
Tweets	Total amount of tweets
Per Day	Average number of tweets posted each day
% Retweeted	Percentage of the user’s tweets retweeted by others
Average Retweets	Average number of tweets retweeted by others

 

#Insurtech - Lemonade Sets New World Record

NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lemonade, the insurance company powered by artificial intelligence and behavioral economics, today announced it has set a world record for the speed and ease of paying a claim: 3 seconds and zero paperwork.

At seven seconds past 5:47pm on December 23, 2016, Brandon Pham, a Lemonade customer, hit 'Submit' on a claim for a $979 Canada Goose Langford Parka.  By ten seconds past the minute, A.I. Jim, Lemonade's claims bot, had reviewed the claim, cross referenced it with the policy, ran 18 anti-fraud algorithms on it, approved the claim, sent wiring instructions to the bank, and informed Brandon the claim was closed.  

Chatting with the claims bot, AI Jim, on the Lemonade app

"Since no international standards exist for the payment of insurance claims, the Guinness Book of World Records was unable to enter Lemonade as the World Record Holder," said Daniel Schreiber, CEO and cofounder, Lemonade.  "Yet from all we can gather, in the 3,000 year history of insurance nothing like this has ever happened in 3 seconds. So we're claiming the

via www.prnewswire.com

THE INSURTECH REPORT: How financial technology firms are helping — and disrupting — the nearly $5 trillion insurance industry

THE INSURTECH REPORT: How financial technology firms are helping — and disrupting — the nearly $5 trillion insurance industry

Sarah Kocianski

28 Sep 2016, 18:17

Finance

11,621

BI Intelligence

The global insurance industry is worth nearly $5 trillion, and insurance companies are at risk of losing a share of this valuable market to new entrants. That's because these legacy players have been even slower to modernize than their counterparts in other financial services industries. 

This has created an opportunity for a group of firms known as insurtechs. These startups are leveraging new technology and a better understanding of consumer expectations to increase efficiencies in the insurance industry. Some are helping incumbents deliver better end products, while others are directly competing with legacy players.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at the drivers behind the increasing number of insurtech companies, how they are helping or disrupting legacy players in the insurance industry, and where legacy players are innovating off their own backs. 

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• The opportunity is currently biggest in the US and Europe. That's because these regions have large, very mature insurance industries. 
• Insurtechs' products and services mostly target retail customers. This includes small businesses and consumers. 
• Most insurtechs are acting as enablers. This means that they offer products and services that help insurers and reinsurers improve their processes and better serve customers. 
• Of the main players in the insurance industry, brokers are most at risk of disruption. This is because insurtechs can easily replicate their services and are solving historical industry problems faster than legacy players. 
• Legacy players are also innovating. In particular, insurers and reinsurers are investing in insurtechs and fintechs working with relevant technologies. At the same time, they are improving their own direct-to-consumer digital interfaces, increas

via www.businessinsider.fr