Hi everyone,
Here’s your weekly Insurtech digest from last week, subscribe and share if you like the content!
To start off the week, I strongly recommend you reading the latest review of European Insurtechs in H1’2021 by Astorya.vc. Below are some key takeaways from the same review. Can European Insurtechs continue raising so much money at such a hectic pace during the second half of 2021? Who will IPO first in Europe? Full article here 📰 Tech EU
Fund-raising record: European Insurtechs raised over €1.7B across 52 deals. That’s basically as many deals as in 2019 and already 70% of what was announced in 2020. Dizzying.
Mega-rounds: two companies, namely Wefox and Bought by Many, attracted half of the money invested in European insurtech startups over H1. Also crazy.
Geographies: the three biggest ecosystems (France, Germany and the UK) have attracted 95% of the money invested in H1 2021.
Value chain: distribution remains the most dynamic part of the value chain, representing 58% of all rounds.
💲 VC fund-raising and M&A news
YuLife, the London-based life insurance technology company, raises a $70 million Series B round led by Target Global at $346 million valuation. We usually discuss P&C Insurtechs, so it’s great news to see entrepreneurs tackle the coveted yet more complex to disrupt life insurance space. YuLife incentivizes and rewards users to focus on their physical and mental health through a gamified interface. Its app is designed around the concept of different environments, currently covering forest, ocean, desert and mountains, in which users are encouraged to walk, cycle, meditate, and do other activities. Users can compare their performance with their co-workers, and are obviously offered discounts on third-party products to boost engagement. It very much looks like what Discovery Vitality does in South Africa, the UK and other markets. YuLife currently operates in the UK in a B2B fashion. Customers include Capital One, Co-op, Curve, Havas Media, Severn Trent and Sodexo 📰 TechCrunch
Insurello, the Swedish Insurtech, raises €15 million in an investment round led by Nordstjernan Growth. Insurello helps consumers find insurance previously unknown to them and get the compensation they are rightly entitled to. Insurello handled more than 200,000 cases and received more than €20 million in compensation for its customers. The company recently launched in Denmark and France 📰 Insurtech Insights
Setoo to merge with Pattern to create an embedded insurance leader. Setoo is a startup that helps e-commerce players develop new revenue streams from insurance. The new entity, under the name Pattern, will help businesses generate new revenue streams and increase customer satisfaction through tailored insurance products. Setoo raised a total of $25 million from investors including from venture builder Kamet Ventures 📰 Business Insider
🚀 New products, partnerships, collaborations and more
Two interesting news from AXA this week:
AXA hopes to launch new coverage insurance for space travelers: The AXA discussions come as two billionaires, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, have made headlines for their respective space tourism companies. Today, there’s insurance space-related incidents and rockets, but not for passengers. Space travel spending could reach between $10 billion and $15 billion annually by 2030, said Ken Herbert, Virgin Galactic analyst at Canaccord Genuity 📰 Barron’s
In China, AXA partners with health Insurtech group QingSong Health Group to explore insurance education, insurance innovation, health services and other aspects 📰 Asia Insurance Review
French neo-insurer Seyna launches new app for reinsurers. The app is open to all reinsurers, and will enable them to easily export data files, leverage Seyna’s analytics, safely share and download documents related to your portfolios, find deals on a dedicated reinsurance marketplace, and more 📰 Seyna
Zego teams up with energy provider BP on an electric vehicle (EV) service trial proposition. The two firms will provide professional insurance as part of bp’s all-inclusive EV subscription service 📰 Insurance Times
Home 🏡 and car 🚗 insurance news
Kin Insurance, the US-based home Insurtech, is set to go public through a merger with Omnichannel Acquisition Corp., a blank-check firm led by Matt Higgins. The combined company is set to have an enterprise value of about $1 billion. The transaction is expected to provide Kin with approximately $242 million of cash. Kin has a 92% customer-retention rate and is expecting to more than triple its written premiums in 2021; and to hit more than $400 million in total written premiums by the end of 2023. With Hippo Insurance, Kin is the second home insurance technology firm to go public through a SPAC in 2021. And the third if you count Lemonade in the mix 📰 Bloomberg
Speaking of Lemonade, the company just announced the results of its Giveback program for 2021. Lemonade customers gave out $2.3 million to 65 charities. Click on the following link to see how the Giveback was used 📰 Lemonade
French mutual insurer Matmut partners with key replacement startup SecurKeys. When losing/forgetting their keys, Matmut customers will be able to have a new set of keys delivered under less than 1 hour, 24/7, by SecurKeys 📰 Eficiens (in French!)