JD.com sets sights on insurance

Hi there,

At JD.com’s annual meeting last week, CEO Liu Qiangdong outlined JD’s (NASDAQ: JD) plans to provide its own life and auto insurance products to customers.

It’s worth looking back at how other Chinese internet giants have fared in insurance. Though Ant Financial acquired a majority stake in Cathay China in Sept. 2015 to obtain a license to develop insurance products, Baidu has yet to receive its license for its joint venture with Allianz and Hillhouse Capital announced in Nov. 2015.

Liu seems to be open to both. In JD Finance’s case, the company “is currently applying for insurance licenses”, but “may also acquire a company to obtain the required license.”

Metromile looks to B2B?

Innovation was a key theme at Intact Financial’s (TSE: IFC) investor day yesterday, and the Canadian insurer described what it’s learned from startup partners and portfolio companies:

One of those companies is Metromile which, according to a recent job listing, is now interested in “reimagin(ing) enterprise software and build(ing) highly leveraged web and mobile products for insurers.” Metromile announced it raised $153M in new funding in 2016 and acquired Mosaic Insurance for $22M.

New filings

Health insurance enrollment startup HealthSherpa recently said that it helped about 2% of the people who signed up for ACA coverage in 2017 and 750,000 people over the last three years.

While debate continues to swirl over the future of the ACA, our tracker picked up a new $6.6M financing to San Francisco-based HealthSherpa this week. More details at the bottom of this newsletter.

A filing picked up last week for contract-related insurance marketplace Bunker reflected a restructuring, in which existing securities were issued to a new entity, Bunker Technologies, and not a new financing round.

Have a great rest of the week,

Matt
@mlcwong

P.S. In NYC for LendIt next month? If you’re a senior strategy, M&A or investment professional in financial services or a fintech VC/PE investor, we’ve got spots left at our dinner on March 6. Request an invite.