Ninety’s Insurance Innovation Pulse iii Circle July 2021 Edition

Ninety’s Insurance Innovation Pulse iii Circle July 2021 Edition

Ninety’s Insurance Innovation Pulse is our monthly round-up of new ideas in the global insurance industry.  We cover headlining innovations, top innovation themes and innovation analysis for the month. Ninety’s Idea Pulse dashboard provides visual indicators of monthly innovation trends by business lines, regions, and Ninety’s innovation taxonomy – the Ten Types of Insurance Innovation.

The data for this report is compiled from officially announced, ready to market innovations reported from leading insurers, reinsurers, and brokers across the world.

Our monthly round-up concludes with a showcase of 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.

July Highlights

• In July, Ninety recorded a total of 58 new ideas and announcements from insurance businesses around the world, not counting insurtechs.
• Innovation trends in July remained consistent with May and June. Sustainable insurance, ESG risk management, telehealth and electric vehicle insurance were some of the recurring themes.
• Personal P&C accounted for a majority of the innovation in July – 2 out of every 5 new ideas. Innovation covered a wide spectrum of products such as personal auto, homeowners, personal cybersecurity, bike, personal possessions and travel insurance.
• Technology themes centred around telematics, AI and connected tech, data and analytics. 

The Top Innovation Themes in July

 Insurance Idea Pulse Dashboard: July 2021

 Ninety’s Analysis

• We recorded 58 innovations announced in July. Personal P&C had the largest share of ideas from all the lines. Innovation Types Product & Proposition and Added Value Services accounted for close to half of the new ideas that were announced.
• ESG risks and sustainable insurance continue to be on the upswing in continuation of the trend from May and June. The pace has perhaps picked up after the launch of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) in April.
• Forward-looking innovation in the area of mobility and sharing economy, electric and hybrid vehicles, climate change risk management featured in tending announcements in July – a leading indicator that attention is shifting towards emerging ideas in the second half of 2021.
• All regions remained consistent with the previous quarter, in terms of distribution of new ideas with North America and Europe having a dominant 90% contribution.

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

• Don’t wait any longer to get innovating on ESG / climate / sustainability. Driven by the global need to address climate change, and the new Net Zero Insurance Alliance, this is picking up speed fast. Read Ninety’s whitepaper on the topic to find out more. 
• Ride the hypergrowth trends. Electric vehicle adoption is accelerating massively, and there are still many opportunities out there to build specialist propositions for this emerging class of vehicle.

Five Innovations That Made Headlines in July

 SCOR, co-launcher of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance confirms phased coal withdrawal.

SCOR, together with seven of the world’s leading insurers and reinsurers, announced the launch of the pioneering Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), the culmination of the founding signatories’ work with the UN Environment Program in April this year.

SCOR has announced its commitment to a phased withdrawal of insurance and facultative reinsurance coverage from unabated coal-fired power plants by 2030 for OECD countries and by 2040 for the rest of the world. This commitment extends to SCOR’s portfolio of reinsurance treaties and begins by strengthening SCOR’s underwriting guidelines for 2022 to screen for all reinsurance treaties with more than 10% coal-related premium.

LV= launches two income protection products for mortgage holders and renters.

LV= is launching simple and affordable income protection products that provide cover if illness or injury prevents the insured person from working and leaves them at risk of defaulting on mortgage payments or rent.  The products are designed to meet the coverage gap for a large proportion of renters, freelance workers and self-employed people who do not own income protection insurance and with fluctuating incomes and irregular working patterns.

LV= Mortgage and Rent Cover offers affordable protection with no minimum hours worked or proof of income required, either when applying or making a claim. The LV= Mortgage and Rent Guarantee ensures that the selected amount of cover will be paid throughout the claim. The amount of cover can also be adjusted by the customer during the lifespan of the policy to account for life events, such as moving house and landlord rent increases.

LV= Executive Income Protection insurance is designed to enable small businesses to pay sick pay to key employees. Focusing on small businesses who typically can’t access Group Protection, LV= Executive Income Protection covers the cost of providing monthly sick pay benefits to a key employee.

If an employee is unable to work due to illness or injury, the employer can make a claim and uses the payments to provide sick pay to their employee (via PAYE)  in place of their employee’s monthly salary. Under Executive Income Protection, additional cover can be taken out for employer pension scheme contributions and employer National Insurance contributions. For added flexibility, a covered employee has an option to transfer the policy from one employer to another based on meeting certain criteria.

RAC and British Gas team up on home EV charger installation and specialist electricity tariff.

The RAC and British Gas (BG) have announced a partnership on an overnight charger offer. The new partnership means customers can have a smart 7kW home charge point installed by an expert British Gas engineer and take advantage of a bespoke electricity tariff with cheaper off-peak overnight charging. Having a home charge point on a competitively priced electricity tariff makes running an electric car cheaper and greener, by making use of excess renewable energy when demand is low overnight.

Customers who want to have a home charge point installed via the RAC have the choice of two models – with either fixed or removable cables. Both chargers can be controlled via a smartphone app. This makes charging more convenient as it not only allows drivers to see if the car is plugged in and charging, it also helps them save money as they can choose to schedule charges to take place overnight when the electricity rate is cheaper. They can also easily look back at their daily, weekly and yearly charging, to see the cost and their electricity usage.

The RAC and British Gas partnership also gives customers access to a highly competitive home electricity tariff specially designed to make overnight electric car charging cheaper than with a conventional tariff.

 TD Insurance launches TD Severe Weather & Safety Alerts.

Canadian insurer TD Insurance, part of the Toronto-Dominion Bank group has launched a digital service to prepare clients for extreme weather risks. TD Insurance Home and Auto customers can now receive timely text alerts of incoming severe weather directly from their TD Insurance (TDI) mobile app with the launch of TD Severe Weather & Safety Alerts from TD Insurance.

TDI Severe Weather & Safety Alerts are available for all TD Insurance Home and Auto customers who register via the TD Insurance app. The Severe Weather & Safety Alerts will notify customers of extreme weather events like heavy winds, heavy rainfall, hail, flooding, heavy fog, heavy snow, freezing rain and extreme cold. Customers can choose up to two locations to monitor incoming weather – such as a primary residence, office location, elderly parent’s home, or cottage – and receive timely weather alerts direct to their mobile device.

According to TD Insurance, this summer season, The Weather Network’s long-term forecast predicts most of Canada will see near to above normal temperatures with parts of Canada expected to receive more severe storms than normal, including a potentially active hurricane season on the East Coast, extreme heat across the country and including possible drought conditions in the Prairies with risk of wildfires and poor air quality. With advance notice, customers can be better prepared and protect property and vehicles when severe weather is expected in their area.

Guy Carpenter launches new climate advisory & modelling services.

Guy Carpenter, the reinsurance broking arm of Marsh McLennan, announced the launch of a suite of advisory and modelling services to help clients integrate climate change strategies into their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) programs.

Key services include natural hazard risk assessment and risk modelling, exposure data enhancement, and adjustment of catastrophe models, as well as capital modelling and solvency capital requirement calculations, traditional risk transfer, parametric instruments and catastrophe bonds, advice on public risk transfer solutions and public/private partnerships and risk underwriting for new technologies and infrastructure.

Working in tandem with Marsh, Oliver Wyman and Mercer, Guy Carpenter is also planning to provide services to its clients that span several other climate-related areas. These services include transition risk modelling, climate investment portfolio modelling, asset-level resilience surveys and scoring, and commercial due diligence.