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January 26, 2023
Like many other travelers this holiday season, I woke up on Christmas Eve to the notification that my Southwest flight had been canceled. The process of rebooking was straightforward; I was able to easily change my flight to a later date from my phone. For the moment, I was mildly annoyed but otherwise unbothered. Three days later, my flight was canceled again, and then my trip altogether....
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November 8, 2022
Insurers are entering an era that requires them to continuously confront previously unforeseen risk. Some lines of business, such as cyber insurance, have been able to overcome a deficit in claims data through analytics and predictive modeling. Other lines have grappled with business interruption coverage and adjusting life insurance mortality models in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic....
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September 2, 2022
Insurance is a notoriously difficult market to enter as a full-stack carrier. This is why many startups choose to go the managing general agent (MGA) route, at least initially. Entering the insurance world as an MGA allows startups to apply their technical knowledge and focus on proving a business model, while leaving risk management and underwriting to the underwriting insurer or reinsurer, i.e...
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March 5, 2021
Pricing is an incredibly stressful fact of life for startups. It says a lot about how customers should think about a solution. Hitting a “sweet spot” is the perennial thorn in the side of most InsureTechs. InsureTech pricing will differ from more established systems that insurers are used to dealing with. Yet pricing is not the most important piece of a startup business strategy; this is...
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September 11, 2020
Simply selling a product online is no longer innovative. As I wrote last week, startups can sell almost any coverage online, from low-complexity and high-volume lines like renters to more complex coverages like individual annuities or group benefits. Many startups are rethinking distribution, bringing products to consumers rather than merely enabling a direct online purchase via an...
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September 2, 2020
If an insurer can sell it, a startup can sell it directly online. This reality was initially true for low-complexity, high-transaction coverages like homeowners, renters, and auto (think renters insurer Lemonade or homeowner’s startup Hippo). Online distribution eventually made its way to individual life insurance; many startups—Ethos, Fabric, and Ladder—now offer fluid-less term life...
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August 26, 2020
Startup insurers are not often built for scale or longevity. They usually have the advantage of writing on someone else’s paper, so they can go after historically unprofitable market segments and focus on customer experience. Often, the goal is to prove a business model, as most are running on limited funding. Yet a handful of startups are positioning their models for long-term growth—some as...
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August 19, 2020
COVID-19 has had some unforeseen side effects for life insurers. This market segment historically lagged its peers in property/casualty in digital and analytics capabilities, and life insurers must now rethink both. InsureTech startups may be able to provide some relief and quick wins for insurers, whether through partnerships or lessons learned. Life insurers have long sought to...
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August 13, 2020
Something all startups have in common is a love of data, regardless of the solution they provide. Increasingly, startups are lending their expertise with unstructured data. Startups don’t usually provide pure data sets or data aggregation, as many large and established vendors have a foothold in these spaces. Yet many offer platforms to ingest data, process it, and derive insights....
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August 5, 2020
Everyone’s talking about AI. Many InsureTechs claim to have built AI platforms, including machine learning, machine vision, and natural language processing (NLP). However, these capabilities aren’t always real AI; they might be glorified predictive analytics or even simple rule engines. One AI technology making inroads is machine vision. Insurers most often apply machine vision for damage...
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