A16Z backs Health IQ. Hartford Steam Boiler partners with At-Bay.
Hi there,
Borders between the worlds of insurance and wealth management are coming down.
According to an FT survey of 1,000 urban Chinese consumers out this week, Yu’E Bao — the $241B money market fund established by Alibaba — and investment products sold on platforms such as Ping An Insurance-affiliated online financial marketplace Lufax are likely to see the biggest inflows in the coming six months.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest under-the-radar trends in the ETF market is the entrance of major insurers, who have launched six of the largest most popular new ETFs of 2017. Per Bloomberg data, insurers’ home-grown funds now oversee more than $25.3 billion, up from just $1.9 billion five years ago.
Over the last few years, we’ve also seen insurers make investments or acquisitions in the digital wealth management space.
In 2014, New York Life made its entry into the ETF industry by acquiring FTV Capital-backed ETF issuer IndexIQ, maker of 23 ETFs. More recently, Aviva last month took a majority stake in robo-investment startup Wealthify as “part of its strategy to build customer loyalty.”
According to ETF.com, only six insurers, John Hancock, Transamerica, Nationwide, Hartford Funds, Principal, and USAA, had issued their own ETFs, as of October 26. Our own research highlights these insurers have also invested in digital wealth startups including Blooom, NextCapital, Fairr.de, and SigFig.
Speaking of digital wealth management, we’ll be doing a deep dive on four of the more notable players to emerge — Wealthfront, Betterment, Stash, and Acorns — on Monday. Sign up here.
Workers’ comp startup raises $11.5M
Earlier this week, our trackers picked up a $11.5M investment to Clara Analytics, a Santa Clara-based startup. Clara provides analytics products aimed at workers’ comp claim adjusters including an early warning system for claims managers to prioritize cases. The startup partnered with Aon Benfield in October.
More fundraises
Cyber insurance managing general underwriter At-Bay launched in California with $6M from Lightspeed Venture Partners. The startup is partnered with Hartford Steam Boiler, targeting mid-market companies with “sophisticated risk managers that have a complex IT and assets they are protecting.” At-Bay provides up to $10M in single-limit standalone cyber coverage distributed through retail brokers.
Health IQ raised $34.6M led by Andreessen Horowitz. After originally launching as a health quiz, Health IQ uses the quizzes to offer discounted term life insurance from 3 carrier partners (SBLI, Ameritas, and Assurity). Health IQ claims $5.3B in “coverage secured.”
