Q&A with Slice insurance. Where insurers are investing. Sharing economy insurance partnerships.
Insurers quicken pace
Hi there,
Over the past two weeks, a number of insurers and their strategic arms including XL Innovate, Sun Life Financial and GIS Strategic Ventures announced their first venture investments in tech upstarts.
Slice aims to launch this summer with both an API product integrated into the sign-up process of ride-sharing marketplaces and an insurance product aimed directly at drivers.
I caught up with Slice CEO Tim Attia (@tattia) on a few insurance lessons he’s learned in operating in the ride and home-sharing markets. Below are his thoughts on key issues like how ride-sharing risks fall through the gaps of traditional insurance models and leveraging global capacity.
On coverage needs
“The insurance industry is structured along lines of business but the ride-sharing and home-sharing industries are not. Insurers have personal lines and commercial lines and they don’t intersect.
In the on-demand economy, you are a person one second and a business the next. As a result, the ride-sharing and home-sharing risks fall right in the middle.”
On insurance capacity as a limiting factor to growth
“The on-demand economy is a global one. If an insurance tech startup is truly in a big global market then one of the limiting factors to rapid growth will be the amount of capacity available. I think it would take too long to build the capacity yourself and a new model is required to leverage existing global capacity.
Getting the right amount of capacity behind you to address the specific markets is the biggest risk. This includes primary carriers, re-insurers and other alternative risk-transfer sources like captives. The balance is being able to get the capacity you need with the amount of control and flexibility required.”
On pharma as a model
“The insurance and re-insurance carriers are a very important part of the ecosystem required to get innovation to market on a global basis. I think insurance tech can maybe look to industries such as pharma for models that work between startups and large incumbents, which requires large investment to scale and new pharma startups cooperate with the large players in order to expand rapidly in multiple global markets once they have a breakthrough and are ready.
This would help with the high costs to enter new markets quickly and to manage very steep customer acquisitions costs in the insurance industry.”
Speaking of the sharing economy
More news at the bottom of the newsletter including insurer-startup partnerships by MAIF in France and Bajaj Allianz in India.
