Techsurance - your weekly insurance technology readings🗞
June 7- June 13
Hi everyone,
Hope you had a great week! A bit late, but here’s your weekly Insurtech digest from last week, subscribe and share if you like the content!
📗 To start off this week’s newsletter, some insights from the industry
Great read from TechCrunch on European and North American Insurtechs. For members only! 📰 TechCrunch
Dealroom just released a great State of European Insurtech report. Below are some key takeaways from the report and slide screenshots. Link to full report 📰 Dealroom
Insurtech has been underinvested compared to other sectors (Fintech, Health, Mobility) but is now growing much faster (x4.1 over 2016-20, versus x1.9 for mobility startups)
2021 already is a record year for European Insurtechs, with €1.8 billion raised year to date, versus €1.2 billion in 2020
European Insurtechs are now worth €23 billion, versus only €6 billion in 2016
While Life and Health insurance represents 70% of total written premium in Europe, L&H Insurtechs remain underinvested compared to P&C
The UK, Germany and France have attracted 85% of total Insurtech funding over the 2016-20 period.
Strategic investors are increasingly embracing Insurtechs: 40% of all rounds in 2020 and 2021 had strategic investors participating
Distribution has attracted most of the funding, but full stack insurers and B2B solutions are attracting more capital now.
Europe has a strong pipeline of current and future unicorns, especially the 2015-16 cohort, which have attracted most of the funding to date but are yet to exit. This is unlike the US, where Insurtechs have exited in mass but experienced poor stock market performance so far.
Future trends in the sector include embedded insurance, parametric insurance, climate, cyber insurance and intangible assets, as well as service ecosystems.
💲 VC fund-raising and M&A news
Embroker raises $100 million Series C led by FTV Capital. Embroker, which is a SF-based MGA for SMBs, plans to utilize the new funding to expand the company into a full-stack insurtech and build its own insurance carrier. Embroker surpassed $20 million in gross written premium for the first quarter of 2021 and achieved over 100% retention 📰 Coverager
🚗🏠 Branch raises $50 million Series B led by Anthemis Group. The Ohio-based company offers bundled home and car insurance, binding both products through an API and bundling them in a single transaction. Furthermore, Branch embeds its offering in partner distribution channels, making its offering bundled and embedded 📰 TechCrunch
ELEMENT raises $19.5 million from a group of investors. ELEMENT is a Berlin-based white-label product factory for insurance, the first ever to get its BaFin licence. Products offered include homeowner’s and liability insurance, flight delay, cyber, and warranty coverage 📰 Coverager
🩺 Babylon Health will go public via $4.2 billion SPAC. The London-based digital health company will merge with Alkuri Global Acquisition Corp some time in the second half of 2021 and trade on Nasdaq. The transaction is expected to deliver up to $575 million of gross proceeds. With its digital healthcare app for AI-powered diagnosis and video appointments, Babylon covers 24 million people across 4 continents. Babylon reported $16 million in unaudited revenue in 2019 and that grew to $79 million in 2020. The company is projecting revenue will jump to $321 million in 2021, reach $710 million by 2022 and top $1.4 billion by 2023 📰 Fierce Health
USAA plans to acquire Noblr to offer usage-based insurance (UBI) to its members. The acquisition complements the news that USAA’s behavior-based insurance (BBI) program, SafePilot, grew 200% in 2020 📰 Coverager
Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s conglomerate, buys $500 million stake in Brazilian neobank Nubank to become Nubank’s largest shareholder. Nubank is the largest fintech in Latin America and one of the largest in the world, with 40 million users in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. It has raised around $2 billion since its inception 📰 Coverager
🚀 New products, partnerships, collaborations and more
🍴 French insurer AXA to offer €300 million settlement to 15,000 restaurant owners in France who hold non-damage business interruption (BI) policies 📰 Insurtech Insights
✈ Chubb develops pay-as-you-roam (PAYR) travel insurance. The PAYR service uses digital technology to simplify the way customers access and purchase travel insurance, using mobile phone roaming data to identify when they are away from their home country, activating coverage automatically at a daily premium. As soon as the customers are detected as roaming, the trip coverage is activated, and a text message or the app’s pop-up notification informs them that their coverage is in place. Customers have four hours from receipt of this to either decline coverage for the trip or to confirm who needs to be included for coverage 📰 Coverager
Vitality partners with Samsung UK to include Samsung Health into the Vitality Programme. The partnership will allow to automatically capture daily steps and heart rate activity for users to earn Vitality activity points 📰 Insurtech Insights