Lighthouse #1
Welcome to Lighthouse #1, which I am sharing with my friends and network. I’ve curated some of the best insurance, insurtech, innovation and leadership content for you. Love your feedback and suggestions. Enjoy!
Ron Arnold
11eight | Linkedin | twitter
I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.
Wayne Gretzky
Thought Leadership and Innovation
Decision making tips from Bezos: Need to make higher impact decisions, faster? Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, shares his secrets on better decision making and why you should be thinking three years out. Find out more in this article
Innovation at pace - some tips: Has COVID19 put your product development team under pressure to accelerate their processes? 13 hackathon teams were analysed to understand what strategies are more or less effective for fast-paced innovation. Some results that will surprise you, read more here.
Five Insights for Navigating Digital Change: The digital economy is here to stay – but are you and your organization ready to harness its full potential and come out on top, or are you sailing without a compass on a cloudy night? This article highlights five insights from MIT Sloan Management Review to help you navigate the sometimes treacherous waters. Go to the article
Australian DIGITALITY driven by Advanced-analytics, Automation and AI – Deliverers, Hopefuls, Enablers, Start ups and Stalwarts: Great overview by Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy covering what's going on in the Australian Automation, AI and Analytics scene. A must read if you are in the data and analytics space. Read the article
Smart drones in the home: Amazon has announced the launch of a Ring drone that will fly around the interior of your home, shooting and live streaming video in the process. This is really taking home surveillance to a whole new level. I can only imagine the amount of data that can be collected with this type of tech. It poses a whole lot of privacy and data rights issues. Be fascinating to get to the bottom of the terms and conditions that go with this type of service. See the video here
Insurance
The bundling and unbundling insurance: From a technological point of view, the digital transformation of insurance is following familiar patterns. The bundling and unbundling of products, services, and entire value chains is such a pattern known from other industries. It is a change of paradigm that will alter the competitive dynamics and will be a big driver of industry disruption. Really good article. Check it out!
Competing with New Digital Players: To compete with digital players, traditional insurers should consider building their own new digital businesses. The following article discusses markers across four critical areas to show if insurers are on track. Read the article
Is Amazon getting ready to have go at motor & health insurance in the West? Mainstream #insurance companies should be watching closely. Good money & big players showing interest in Bangalore-based #insurtech Acko - a digitally focused proposition selling bite-sized auto & health insurance offerings in India. Acko has raised US$60 million in a D round. Munich Re Ventures, led the round. Existing investors Amazon, RPS Ventures & Intact Ventures (corporate venture arm of Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer) all participated. This brings Acko’s to-date raises to $200 million, with a valuation of $500m. Coupled with its fin services capabilities & customer reach, Amazon will likely have access to a slick digital insurance platform. Just needs an 'underwriter' & 'claims manager' for each new market. Could this be Munich Re? Some channel conflict coming & some long term relationships with retailers to be tested? Read the article.
Motor Insurer pricing practice challenged: A motor insurance policyholder who disputed a 26% premium has won his case before the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). The insurer was unable to provide reasonable evidence in support of the increase despite several requests for more information by the AFCA. The case highlights the importance of robust and defensible underwiring and pricing for Insurers. The practices should be easy to explain as Insurers should be expecting greater scrutiny as consumers demand more transparency. This may be increasingly difficult as insurers utilise more diverse sources of data, move to more granular pricing and use sophisticated optimisation models. Read the determination here
CDR and insurance - good and bad! The Financial Rights Legal Centre has outlined what it sees as the positives and negatives from the application of the Consumer Data Right (CDR) to the insurance industry. Of particular concern is more granular pricing that 'prices' people out of the cover they need. More generally insurers need to get comfortable with the idea that much of the data they hold about individuals will be portable. Is an insurer going to show some thought leadership and pro-actively support the CDR? I for one believe this is the right strategic and community position. See the report.
Innovation central to Munich Re's 5 year plan: Munich Re’s recently launched its "Ambition 2025" goals which includes to develop new business models that span the entire value chain, in turn shaping markets. Innovative and digital solutions are seen as key to additional business opportunities. The aim is greater alignment with the hybrid customer business model; the development of new mobility and travel ecosystems; and the ongoing digitisation of customer-driven and back-office processes. Overall, we can see Munich Re is making some strong investments into direct to customer businesses and capabilities. More info here
Embedded Insurance: Really interesting article covering the disruptive threat and opportunity around 'embedded insurance'. This is a disruptive vector that has occupied a fair bit of time with companies we have worked with. Read more
Insurtech
Best of the best 2020: The INSURTECH100 is an annual list of 100 of the world’s most innovative InsurTech companies selected by a panel of industry experts and analysts. These are the companies every leader in the insurance industry needs to know about as they consider and develop their digital transformation strategies. See the line up
Nurturing Start-ups to success: London’s Insurtech Gateway recently won the Insurance Times Investor Innovator of the Year, for the second year running and the Australian Gateway was recently awarded a federal government grant. Insurtech Gateway is the only dedicated and specialist early stage insurtech investor in Australia. As the wave of risk and compliance progressively strangles corporate innovation in financial services, Insurtech Gateway offers a way for insurers to explore innovation in a low cost, dynamic way. Find out more
Build Insurance Coverage as You Spend: Interesting partnership between Visa and start-up SnackUp. SNACKUP builds on consumers’ shopping habits and rewards them with stackable insurance coverage in the form of rebates when they pay for their purchases with their Visa cards. As the data maturity of payment platforms mature, a whole series of timely trigger based insurance opportunities are likely to arise (eg plane ticket triggers travel insurance offer, bike purchase trigger bicycle insurance offer and so on). Read the article
Home Insurance Start-up Hippo lands a big raise: Insurtech unicorn Hippo closed a $350 million round to help it expand into more of the U.S. Hippo is a super interesting home insurance challenger and really showing what can be done with a bit of imagination and commitment. Hippo is challenging and rethinking how home insurance is done and is delivering some great outcomes for home owners. This great video gives you a taste of what they are about. If you are a traditional insurer you should be checking them out.
#Diversity
#startup ecosystem diversity is a problem. Women get less than 3% of #vcfunding globally, yet they typically outperform their male counterparts (BCG). Access to capital, training to help build new skills & access to networks of power are key challenges. Here I share the stories of inspirational women in the start-up ecosystem and important educational pieces.
Investing in Women Isn’t a F**king Charity: Great article by Jesse Draper, well researched and cuts to the chase. And highlights the reality that VC’s are fraught with biases that sees them doing very little investing in certain Founders. The nub of the problem as Jesse concisely puts it: “On a macro level, the lack of diversity in the industry is a problem because it means most of the money flows to types of founders VCs understand — businesses with white men of a certain socioeconomic background as their target customer. It means fewer great businesses have the opportunity to thrive. It means we put fewer products out into the world that improve the lives of women, BIPOC, and marginalized communities.” A must read
My Life Capsule - Pam Moorhouse: Pleased to be sharing my latest article about an inspiring female founder - Pam Moorhouse, CEO and Founder of My Life Capsule. My Life Capsule helps people solve the problem of capturing and safely storing important life documents, so they can be easily accessed when they are needed - anywhere, anytime! Read her story
“Lack of fit” hampering Female Founders: This technical study provides some good insights, with evidence for a “lack of fit” effect:
1. Female-led ventures catering to male-dominated industries receive significantly less funding at significantly lower valuations than female-led ventures catering to female-dominated industries.
2. Male-led ventures attain similar funding and valuation outcomes regardless of the gender dominance of the industries to which they cater.
3. Investors perceive lower degrees of fit between founding CEO and venture for female-led ventures catering to male - as opposed to female-dominated industries (no perceived fit differences for male-led ventures across industries).
4. Investor sophistication emerges as a potential factor, appearing to reduce gender bias from perceived lack of fit.
VCs should be seeking to understand why these 'biases' might exist and put in place mechanisms to address them. Read the article
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