Insurance technologies – Insurtech – the industry is relatively new. Nevertheless, the growth rate allows us to call it one of the most active segments of the fintech market. Even despite the 34% decline in 2017, the number of transactions in the field of insurance technology nevertheless grew by 25%. As for the anomalous growth in 2015, it was caused mainly by unusually expensive Chinese transactions, including an investment of $ 1 billion in one of the largest insurance startups Zhong An.Today there are about 1,400 companies in the insurance technology market. However, the growth of this indicator slowed. If in 2015 there were about 300 companies registered, last year there was a noticeable 40% drop (about 180 new start-ups). The year before last was the peak, mainly due to the largest in the history of the segment of the acquisition of the Chinese company Zhong An. Investments in it amounted to almost 40% of financing received by all players of the insurance companies market. Be that as it may, the number of investment deals continued to grow steadily: 54 agreements were concluded in 2014, in 2015 – 125, in 2016 this figure grew by 25% (compared to 2015), reaching 157 transactions.
The United States remains the foremost market of insurance technologies: nearly 50% of all investments were mastered by American companies. Surprisingly, the segment is gaining popularity in India, and China last year was very quiet compared to the boom of 2015.
The majority of IPOs were carried out by companies that are, in fact, classical insurers, seeking a thorough transformation of their business:
In 2017, several interesting mergers and acquisitions are expected from traditional insurance companies. The latter, in comparison with banks, have become very active with respect to innovations, trying to cooperate with representatives of the insurance technology market and to interact even at the early stages of their development. That is why the conclusion of new investment contracts, mergers and acquisitions on the market is just a matter of time.
Online insurance is one of the most dynamically developing fi nite areas that, over the next few years, will undoubtedly turn into In a separate and distinctive sector. Meanwhile, PingAn, Zhong An and other Chinese insurance companies, as well as Hong Kong investors Horizon Ventures could give odds to other players in terms of practical results. As usual, American and Chinese companies focus only on their own home markets (Lemonade and Metromile planned to cover their services by the whole country by 2017) and only European players think from the position of growth and expansion. Thus, FriendSurance and Trov launched their services in the Australian market, FinanceFox added Switzerland and Austria to its coverage area, and DocPlanner operates in 25 markets.
Now, when the formation of the online insurance market is coming to an end, services Price comparisons, product aggregators and brokers (Zebra, PolicyGenius, Bunker, FinanceFox, Alan, CoverFox) together occupy the largest market share. Nevertheless, proceeding from the tendencies typical for the finteha, it can be said that such prosperous services in the future will go to the background, giving way to players who can provide the end customer with an expanded and qualitatively new set of services. Those who do not want to follow this path to retain customers and businesses will have to cover the adjacent sectors of the fintech market with their activities. For example, Oscar Health is now very active in many areas, from an online appointment to a doctor and the development of telemedicine solutions to contracts with small employers to improve the quality of services provided to their employees and the opening of a new hospital in Brooklyn in order to increase loyalty Customers and operating profit by providing a comprehensive set of services.
In general, if previously insurance companies preferred to work with large businesses, modern insurers begin to pay all More attention is paid to cooperation with small and medium-sized businesses. Obviously, this trend is associated with the growth of “gigonomy” (freelancers, participants in intermediary markets and on-demand service, as its main elements). Slice, Stride, Bunker and CoverFox offer fairly new, inherently Uber-like services for new types of employees and customers. The availability of services that sell insurance services in accordance with the models “Pay for each mile” (“Metromile”) and “Pay for every use” (Slice) are bright examples of on-demand service and purposeful satisfaction of drivers who spend little time on the road.
Another interesting example, also borrowed from the pool of topical economic trends is collective insurance. Services such as Lemonade and FriendSurance allow you to join an insurance group, instead of acquiring an individual policy, which consists of similar needs and life circumstances, and also, perhaps, personally familiar people. In case the insured event does not occur, customers receive their contributions back after deducting the platform commission.
The rapid development of consumer online lending leads to increased demand for online insurance services: insurance of electronics, sports equipment and even musical instruments Available, for example, in Trov). The high volume of sales of fitness trackers and the growing popularity of fitness applications create favorable conditions for the emergence of companies that collect and analyze this kind of information about your physical activity (FitSense). Innovations in the field of artificial intelligence and the invention of chatbots lead to the emergence of services that can offer products automatically (Clark) or predict critical situations (Quartet).
The segments of insurance and medical technology are moving rapidly to a common denominator and this development Seems logical. Insurance giant PingAn launched PingAn Good Doctor to provide its customers with the opportunity to appoint online physicians and receive telemedicine services. At the moment, the service is already used by 77 million customers who receive medical care from 250,000 doctors. Quartet allows people to get advice from a wide range of therapists, as well as automatically analyze their symptoms. DocPlanner and Doctoralia also provide online services for appointments at a doctor online. The first service serves 8 million people in 25 countries, the second – 9 million in 20 countries.
The growth rates of new generation services are gaining momentum, and this happens not only organically, but also due to their merging with each other. Thus, DocPlanner recently completed the acquisition of Doctoralia, and Metromile acquired Mosaic Insurance in order to be able to independently assess the insurance risks and the cost of policies.
Insurance and medical technology markets are attracting more investor attention. The events of recent years show that insurance companies behave more actively in relation to new technologies, than banks have previously reacted to innovations in the field of fi ntekh. And apparently, the first learned lessons from the failures of the latter and decided not to resist technological changes and not to ignore them.
