Oscar buoys insurance tech $ in Q1’16

Shifting tide

Hi there,

Last week, we highlighted major startup hires, deals, and carrier partnerships in the insurance tech ecosystem. Today, we break down Q1’16 insurance tech financing trends. 

In Q1’11, fewer than 10 insurance tech startups raised a financing round. Fast forward to Q1’16 and insurance tech notched its strongest quarter ever on the deal front with more than 45 deals totaling $650M.

We’d earlier highlighted that as early-stage investments move beyond health coverage to small business, renter’s, life insurance and other areas, 2016 could see about-face in US insurance tech deal share. That appears to be bearing out from the early Q1’16 data.

By the numbers

A few highlights from our weekly round-up of insurance tech articles below.

17 – percent of US small business insurance premiums will be underwritten digitally by 2018, according to estimates.
15 – Estimated dollar amount of cyber insurance premiums in billions by early 2020s.
2 – automakers announcing or launching car sharing services this week. One of them, Jaguar Land Rover, is also set to launch a new insurance product in the coming weeks.
3 – investments made by Aviva’s venture arm to date.

Hope you have a great rest of the week.

Matt
@mlcwong