Let's take the most popular one 'Wefox'. As any fintech/crypto/insurtech company they have been buying themselves lots of ad space on sport teams ranging from soccer to Formula1 to IndyCar.
But there is no trace of any information regarding their dealflow or policies, not even the most important thing for an insurance company which is Assets Under Management.
If I want to look at the AUM which Generali or Aviva or GEICO has right now it appears both on Google and in their Balance Sheet.
I'm yet to see one really using "AI" to do their work, not least because insurance is a highly regulated market that operates on very thin margins, and so there's very little risk tolerance in doing actuarial work in new ways.
The closest to AI that I've seen was a company with a "data scientist" who would just read through your emails to find insurance policies after you gave them access to your Gmail account. Seriously.
Another type of product is insurance marketplaces. There are many of these, but they all boil down to comparison services, which are essentially advertising/marketing businesses that make money via referrals. I wouldn't really call these "insuretech", but it's debatable and I think some of them do consider themselves as such.
I also worked in insurance technology on the first point you've mentioned. Most of what I was trying to do was implementing the business logic of a worker's comp company that was attempting to optimize risk across different states, and comply with what regulators permitted.
It was all in excel and just needed to be ported to something more modern and future proof.
6 comments
[ 0.12 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] threadBut there is no trace of any information regarding their dealflow or policies, not even the most important thing for an insurance company which is Assets Under Management.
If I want to look at the AUM which Generali or Aviva or GEICO has right now it appears both on Google and in their Balance Sheet.
The closest to AI that I've seen was a company with a "data scientist" who would just read through your emails to find insurance policies after you gave them access to your Gmail account. Seriously.
That usually involves either
1. Coming up with a better pricing / risk model that lets them underwrite certain risks for less than their competitors
2. Coming up with a better way to provide / sell insurance to people, including better forms of brokerage (such as comparison services)
3. Selling things that do (1) or (2) to other businesses. Think of how post-Monzo a bunch of companies offer "challenger banks in a box".
When I worked in insurtech, we were doing all three.
It was all in excel and just needed to be ported to something more modern and future proof.