Aviva acquires Neos. Marsh partners with Wefox. This week in insurance tech.
Hi there,
As we approach the end of the year, we wanted to use the next few newsletters to recap some of our coverage across different markets over the last 12 months.
We start with Europe this week.
Investment
In 2018 YTD, insurance tech companies headquartered in Europe have raised over $450M across 75 deals. That’s a drop-off from 2017’s total of $581M with a little less than a month to go in the year.
The majority of activity in Europe was at the early stage, with 71% of deals happening at the Seed or Series A stage. The same percentage of total European deals took place in either Germany or the UK.
This year, we saw a couple M&A transactions by UK and European (re)insurers of startups they had previously taken a minority stake in.
In November, Aviva took a majority stake in smart home insurance startup Neos. Aviva had previously invested in Neos through its venture arm in 2017.
Two months prior, Munich Re’s HSB unit acquired portfolio company Relayr for $300M. Relayr offers an IoT middleware platform for helping small and medium-sized industrial companies unlock data insights from their machinery.
Partnerships
Broker look to startup partners: This week, Marsh partnered with Wefox Group to collaborate on providing insurance products to micro-SME businesses in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Earlier, Marsh made a strategic investment in UK-based Bought By Many, with a similar eye toward the SME market.
Amazon storefront: An interesting “collaboration” happened in October when Mapfre launched a storefront to offer its products on Amazon.es via a branded storefront. The companies are exploring the possibility of adding Amazon lockers to Mapfre offices and incorporating Amazon Pay.
Tailored products & distribution. We saw several (re)insurers partner with startups on tailored products such as AXA’s partnership with BlaBlaCar on a new offering in three tiers from third-party liability protection to comprehensive insurance for risks including collision damage. AXA also partnered with ING designed to offer modular, digital versions of AXA’s P&C products to customers of its online bank in six countries.
Look east: In March 2018, Prudential plc spun off its British and European business to refocus on faster-growing markets. One of the biggest partnerships by dollar value this year was by Prudential’s Asia unit with Babylon Health. The partnership gave Prudential’s Asia clients access to Babylon’s virtual consultation services in 12 markets. Prudential is reportedly paying ~$100M over several years to access Babylon’s software. Allianz’s strategic investment in Go-Jek may also portend more ecosystem-type moves in Southeast Asia.
CB Insights clients can view an updated, interactive market map of Europe’s insurance startup landscape here.
P.S. Look forward to seeing some of you at TRANSFORM this week. If you’re attending, be sure to book meetings with fellow attendees as well as the CB Insights analyst team via the conference networking app Brella.
