Life insurers acquire tech startups. Zurich's new investments.
Hi there,
Earlier this week, startup Sure announced a new partnership with Chubb to allow ride-share passengers the option to buy additional accident and death coverage. Per the details:
“Chubb will underwrite Sure’s ride-sharing policies, which will pay up to $10,000 in medical costs per accident and include a $100,000 death benefit, the firms said. It costs $2.40 for a 24-hour period.”
The new partnership has sparked an interesting discussion, including over whether consumers would download an app to set up the coverage.
We’ve been doing some research of the App Store ourselves. One interesting finding is that of the ~20 venture-backed US apps that rank among the top 100 apps in the “Finance” category, none weren’t also in the top 100 last year. Launching a breakout consumer finance app is getting harder.
Some apps are using cryptocurrencies as a customer acquisition tool for millennials. Others, with user bases now in the millions, are looking to tack on banking products.
We should expect to see a lot more product line expansion from popular finance apps over time. As that happens, our eyes are peeled for creative new forms of digital insurance bundling.
Insurers are also on the lookout for new partnerships in this regard. Last week, ING and AXA announced a new long-term agreement to provide AXA’s P&C, health, and protection insurance products to ING’s digital bank customers in six countries. Per AXA’s Thomas Buberl on the tie-up:
“It is a very modular and decomposed offering. We disaggregate the products and link them to the customer journey of ING. Traditional insurance products have many different coverage elements and they do not fly on digital platforms.”
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InsureTech Connect 2018
On October 2nd and 3rd, the third annual InsureTech Connect event kicks off at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. ITC will bring together more than 6,000 attendees and speakers including top insurers, reinsurers, and regulators. View the initial 50+ announced speakers here.
Our newsletter readers can save $200 off tickets by using this link.
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Stalled progress
Back in 2015, we highlighted the flurry of different partnerships getting struck between insurers and smart home providers like Ring, Canary, and Nest. But since then, insurers haven’t really moved beyond testing connected devices in exchange for a discount on premiums.
Stacey Higginbotham wrote a good overview on why insurers are stalling on connected home. Have thoughts on the topic? Reply back to this email.
Small M&A
There have been some small tech M&A moves by insurers in recent weeks. One that seemed to fly under the radar this month was Sun Life’s acquisition of benefits and HR tech platform Maxwell Health. Deal figures were not disclosed.
Maxwell was last valued near $120M, but had not raised new financing since early 2016.
Meanwhile, Principal Financial acquired digital wealth management platform RobustWealth, which offers white-label solutions to investment advisors.
Both Maxwell and RobustWealth will continue to operate independently. But one wonders if over time the two will eventually fold into digital units for their acquirers (especially in the case of Maxwell, where a tech solution owned by a single carrier may not make much sense to employers and brokers).
P.S. Sign up for the free livestream of our Future of Fintech conference this Wednesday and Thursday. We’ll also send copies of all slides and videos after the event for those who sign up.
