By Rick Huckstep

My goal; to find innovative and disruptive InsuranceTech startups within the world of Fintech.

And over the past 6 months I have featured over 2 dozen InsuranceTech startups and emerging businesses, and interviewed the CEO or Founder of the majority of them. The businesses have ranged from new distribution plays to the provenance of diamonds; from the post Obamacare US health and employee benefits insurance market to commercial insurance matchmaking; from green insurance to the most talked about area of innovation in insurance, which is motor and the rise of telematics the connected car, Internet of Things and big data. Then throw in plenty of cloud, Software as a Service, block chain, data science and high performance computing!

One thing is for sure, there is no shortage of InsuranceTech startup!

Whether they are building new tech platforms or redefining the old business models for insurance, they span all segments of the global market.

Across Property & Casualty, Life & Annuities and Reinsurance, they span personal and commercial lines, retail and wholesale markets. The geographic spread spans Silicon Valley on the West Coast to the Balkan states in Eastern Europe and down through the Africa continent.

For some, it has been 6 months since they were first featured on www.dailyfintech.com and it is time for an update. Building on the first “In search of InsuranceTech” feature published back in June, here is a update on the progress that some of them have made since they were first featured.

And in no particular order…

QuanTemplate – the advanced data analytics platform for the re/insurance market announced it has raised £5.2m (a tad under $8m) this month. The fund raise was lead by Route 66 Ventures and supported by existing investor, Anthemis along with new shareholders to the company including, Transamerica Ventures (part of the Aegon Group) and Allianz Digital Corporate Ventures (part of Allianz SE).

Erste Digital – first featured here back in July, Erste Digital is a German intermediary that is providing annex insurance at the point of sale. Annex insurance is a secondary purchase; you buy your iPhone then you insure it. Erste Digital are planning their expansion into the UK market and have refined their platforms that integrate with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well as offering a B2B2C platform for intermediaries to offer annex.

Insly – Offering an Insurance as a Service platform built by an insurance business for an insurance business, Insly is an Estonian based startup that came through the Startupbootcamp Fintech accelerator programme. Now with customers across 24 countries, the team has concentrated their efforts in the London Market and this is proving to be a successful strategy in an already mature market for software solutions.

Abaris – this is a retail annuity comparison platform for the US markets. Abaris makes it easy for consumers to select annuity products based on their own personal circumstances. Since I featured Abaris back in April, they have released their latest product and now, users have the ability to compare and purchase retirement income products within their Individual Retirement Accounts. This follows on the back of changes to the US tax regime and Abaris are the first platform in the US market that makes the comparison of these (complex) products simple and transparent.

RiskMatch – a platform that matches carriers and brokers in the highly fragmented US commercial insurance market. It provides detailed analysis, top down, of the insurer’s business…and at a fraction of the cost of a traditional data warehouse solutions. When I caught up recently with the CEO he told me of the experienced people the business was attracting as he grows the team. They are up to $13bn of premiums going through the platform and the aim is to hit $20m by the end of the year. An interesting development has emerged from discussions with carriers. The Riskmatch platform has a great UI that presents a very intuitive analysis of the business to the executive. Carriers are now using looking at the platform to sit over their existing business warehouses to present the kind of granular breakdown they cannot get from their substantially more expensive investments in data warehouses

BenefitVault – who provide a solution that fills the gap between employer’s administration and insurance brokers. The US market for insurance has changed significantly following Obamacare in 2010. This was President Obama’s plan to extend the use of insurance products to offer cover and protection to a much wider and deeper proportion of the US population. BenefitVault takes the burden off the shoulder of employers whilst providing employees with a low cost service to manage their increased responsibilities for insurance cover. Since being featured on Daily Fintech last month, Mike Flannery has taken up post as COO and the platform is about to get a face lift with a new website and new portals to go with it.

moneymeets – fresh from a successful raise of €3.5m with Swiss based Woodman Asset Management, CEO Dieter Fromm described for me how the German retail market is responding to the moneymeets platform. This is in part fueled by the evolution to Fintech 2.0 (1.0 was about startups unbundling banks and insurers and targeting niche parts of the institution, such as remittances). With 2.0 the move is towards re-bundling services and offering a broader proposition. The recent fund raising is a clear vote of confidence in the business and also takes moneymeets into the Swiss market, where they expect to be trading by the start of 2016.

Other InsuranceTech businesses featured on Daily Fintech include;

Everledger – reducing insurance claims and fraud with block chain

DriveWay – measures driver behavior to improve safety and motor premiums

Meteo Protect – weather risk analysis combining real-time big data and 30 years of history

RecordSure – artificial intelligence solution for compliance and regulatory control

Guevara – social motor insurance

Bought by Many – collective buying of general insurance to lower premiums

Friendsurance – general insurance bought in groups who share some of the claims costs

Zenefits– HR SaaS platform funded by employee insurance commissions

Oscar – distribute US healthcare insurance through Exchanges.

Metromile – Pay Per Mile auto insurance

Ingenie – UK’s first to market telematics solution

Vitality – health insurance and the use of wearables to improve wellness

Vlocity – SaaS insurance business built on the Salesforce platform

Grun Versichert – Germany’s leading Green insurance broker

Kasko – on demand insurance for the sharing economy

MicroEnsure – insurance protection for mass markets in Africa and Asia