Ninety’s Insurance Innovation Pulse January 2021 Edition for iii Circle

Ninety’s Insurance Innovation Pulse is our new monthly round-up of the pulse of new ideas in the global insurance industry.  We cover monthly highlights, top 10 innovation themes and Ninety’s Idea Pulse dashboard and innovation analysis for the month. The monthly dashboard monitors monthly innovation trends by business lines and regions and to Ninety’s innovation taxonomy as well – the Ten Types of Insurance Innovation. Officially announced, ready to market innovations, collaborations from leading insurers, reinsurers and brokers form the basis of our analysis.

We also showcase five case studies of innovations from a cross-section of business lines and innovation themes. For the most part, the case studies chosen are representative examples of commonly recurring themes of the month rather than examples that focus on novel ideas or one-of-a-kind solutions.

January Highlights

• 2021 has ushered in innovation activity with renewed optimism and vigour. January saw public announcements of 3-4 new ideas and investments every day. Ninety recorded a total of over 75 new ideas and announcements across the globe from insurer businesses alone, not counting insurtechs.
• New products and lines dominated; many influenced by the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses, income protection needs, virtual healthcare and digital operations.
• Digital platforms, connected technologies, AI and data are consistently at the heart of most new ideas and investments.

The Top 10 Innovation Themes in January

Insurance Idea Pulse Dashboard: January 2021

https://ninety.com/2019/08/08/ninetys-ten-types-of-insurance-innovation/

Ninety’s Analysis

• We are seeing some of our predictions of 10 Big Ideas for 2021 coming to light through the distribution of innovations across the Ten Types. New products for small business and cyber insurance, embedded insurance ecosystems and electronic insurance marketplace are among some of the ideas launched in January.
• Reinsurance and P&C lines accounted for more than 8 out of 10 ideas launched in January. Commercial P&C focus was mainly on businesses – small business insurance, workplace safety and employee solutions, while personal P&C had an uptick in income protection and mortgage product launches. Reinsurer innovations were focused mostly on leveraging technology to improve risk modelling and assessment for clients – in life and non-life.
• The bulk of new ideas and announcements came from North America in virtually every category of innovation – new products, VC investments, partnerships, acquisitions and insurtech adoption. However, this mainly represents a selection bias (market size, number of large carriers in our target set, and English language research bias). We’ll deal with this in future months’ updates.

What this means for you: a Ninety Partner point of view

• Primary carriers need to take note of the significant commitments that reinsurers are making to innovation. There is a real danger of being significantly out-innovated and out-manoeuvred.
• Life insurers need to stop making excuses for being innovation laggards. To us, this smells of opportunity: in all other categories, competition for differentiation is hard; in life insurance, the playing field is wide open to the life carrier that grasps the innovation nettle.
• Insurers of all shades and colours need to consider zero-tech brand & marketing innovation. It’s under-weighted, and yet offers some rapid gains. (Is it just us, or do we humans tend to perceive the only worthwhile innovation as that which is the most complex and painful? It’s often the other way around, in truth!)

Five Innovations That Made Headlines in January

Zurich North America takes the lead in 2021 in parametric insurance with a weather risk insurance product.

Zurich North America has launched a parametric insurance product for the construction industry. The insurance will cover weather-related construction delays not covered by traditional builders’ risk insurance policies and, as a parametric policy does not require physical loss or damage for a claim to be paid.

Payment will be triggered by predetermined weather events occurring in the project’s location, such as extreme rain, wind, or temperatures – any of which can cause project delays that result in financial loss, even when the project is not physically damaged. The perils, thresholds, limit, deductible, and coverage duration for the policy can be individually tailored to meet the needs of the buyer. The threshold options for each peril are based on historical weather data at the location of the project. The product further allows tailored coverage in peak seasons for weather risk, for one or more weather perils, and coverage duration.

Chubb partners with digital bank Revolut to offer embedded purchase protection insurance.

Chubb has teamed up with UK headquartered Revolut, a financial technology company that provides digital banking services. Chubb will provide a wide range of coverage for Revolut customers, including purchase protection, refund protection and ticket cancellation. The policy also offers coverage in cases in which a customer has a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 and is, therefore, unable to use event tickets purchased with their Revolut account.

The embedded insurance experience for Revolut customers is delivered via an “Insurance” tab on their mobile app. The insurance solution is powered by Brussels based insurtech Qover and fully integrated into the banking app. It allows customers to access the new insurance products, browse policy documents, port and track claims directly in the app.

THB Group places the first risk with Lloyds, Parsyl collaboration Global Health Risk Facility to insure global distribution of vaccines.

THB Group, the specialist insurance and reinsurance broker became the first to place a risk with Global Health Risk Facility (GHRF) – an alliance of Lloyds insurance and technology partners that was announced in December 2020. GHRF provides comprehensive and data-driven cargo insurance and risk mitigation services for the storage and transit of life-saving medical supplies – including temperature-sensitive Covid-19 vaccines.

THB was engaged to put in place insurance for the Partnership for Supply Chain Management (PFSCM) a supply chain solutions provider that procures and delivers over $300 million worth of medicines, diagnostics, and medical supplies to more than 80 low- and middle-income countries every year.

Syndicate 1796, Lloyd’s new “syndicate in a box”, with managing agent Ascot is GHRF underwriter. Syndicate 1796 was launched last July to insure both the storage and transportation of a COVID-19 vaccine to emerging economies. The solution is underpinned by Lloyd’s Lab alumni Parsyl’s technology. Parsyl’s IoT supply chain data platform can affordably collect and analyse data across the entire supply chain to ensure medicines and vaccines remain safe and effective from the laboratory to use in the field.

Ninety had a chance to be involved in this collaboration at its early stages. Yes, we’re proud!

SCOR is introducing an AI-powered chronic condition-based insurance solution for life insurers.

Reinsurer SCOR has announced a collaboration with Life Sciences company Bayer and One Drop, a digital health solution provider for people living with diabetes and other chronic conditions. The joint effort between SCOR, Bayer and One Drop aims to encourage people to proactively manage their health through products and to reduce the risk of life-threatening complications from medical conditions.

The partners will develop a customized life insurance solution that pairs SCOR’s automated underwriting solution, VELOGICA® with One Drop’s evidence-based holistic health programs and leverages Bayer’s expertise in the worldwide development and commercialization of health solutions.

SCOR’s predictive risk assessment underwriting engine VELOGICA® is at the centre of the idea. VELOGICA® leverages automation that mimics the thought processes of human underwriters, allowing the end consumer to get an instant insurance offer. For people living with diabetes and other chronic conditions, One Drop provides a preventative self-care mobile app solution that enables health data tracking and AI-powered health predictions.

By incorporating One Drop into a chronic condition-based insurance solution, SCOR intends to improve its underwriting insights while promoting healthier lifestyles.

High-end homeowner insurer Openly is bringing self-guided virtual property inspections to market.

Openly, is an upcoming homeowners insurer in the US and a specialist in the high end or premium home segment. Openly policyholders will now be able to conduct self-inspections of their property. Openly is partnering with Flyreel, provider of an AI-enabled solution for residential and commercial property insurance inspections to offer the service.

Customers can use Flyreel’s state-of-the-art AI, high-fidelity video and a conversational chatbot to capture the required elements to accurately underwrite a policy. The inspection process takes only 20 to 30 minutes on average to complete and can be paused and resumed at any time.

Flyreel’s advanced AI assistant guides users through fully configurable workflows. As users scan their property with their smartphone camera, Flyreel’s proprietary computer vision technology automatically documents critical property data like hazards, risks, features, materials, and more.

Openly describes itself as a technology-driven, next-generation personal lines insurer. The products are sold exclusively through independent agents.

These are only 5 examples out of 75 that we have collected in January. To buy access to the data reach out to us at ideapulse@ninety.com