Allstate stays acquisitive

Here are some quick hits over the last two weeks that caught our eye.

Allstate stays acquisitive: On its recent earnings call, Allstate mentioned that SquareTrade’s written premium increased 81.5% to $773M last year. To that end, Allstate has been making acquisitions aimed at bolstering the business. This week, it acquired iPhone repair startup iCracked, presumably to speed up the claims process for device repairs, and in November acquired PlumChoice, which supports consumers and small businesses with technical and cloud setup.

Allstate also acquired employee identity protection firm InfoArmor for $525M in August 2018, which fell under its benefits division.

Insurers driving more strategic dollars into startups: A quick scan on deals over the last two weeks (see bottom) shows heavy participation from insurers including Munich Re, MS&AD, Nationwide, Guardian Life, Hiscox, and others into insurance-related startups. We’ll dig into this shift more in a future newsletter.

Term life startups go B2B2C: We’re seeing new advisor offerings and partnerships take place and will monitor how this evolves.

Berkshire launches THREE: Another move in the small commercial marketplace as Berkshire looks to roll out a new comprehensive insurance product directly to small businesses this summer. Recall Progressive’s move in the space in November.

Join us in June in NYC

We’re excited to launch a new conference in parallel with our 4th annual Future of Fintech for the P&C industry on June 11 in NYC.

The conference will be content-rich with a series of firesides focused on strategic topics and themes impacting the P&C industry, ranging from the future of digital mortgage and the freelance economy to cyber risk and telematics.

We’ve announced the first set of speakers including Assurant CEO Alan Colberg, Blend CEO Nima Ghamsari, and CM Telematics CTO Hari Balakrishnan, and will have many more announcements in the coming weeks.

If you’re involved in strategy or innovation in or excited to dig more into the topics above, we hope you’ll join us in June. Heavy discounts are available for those who want to attend both FoI and FoF.

Have a great weekend,
Matt
@mlcwong

P.S. We’ll cover some of these topics in a slide briefing on Feb. 26. Sign up here.