Once life adapts to the new normal, December 2020 will be remembered as a special month. The month of the vaccine. Prior to December, Mumps was the fastest vaccine to make it to the market that was developed by a vaccine savant, Maurice Hilleman. (Full NPR Story) This process was functionally manual, using a live virus and evolving the virus via chicken embryos.

Fortunately for us, vaccine science has evolved since 1967, and a once theoretical technique of using mRNA to develop a vaccine may now become the new standard.

That brings us back to insurance. Imagine how the world could change if 4-year processes could be done in 11 months. If the entire industry came together for change. In a way, that is happening. The InsurTech community is driving change, but many of us are still caught up in low-interest rates and the next six months.

To help you get beyond 2021, InsurTech NY has decided to use March as an opportunity to look out four years to 2025. And, we have partnered with InsurTech Hartford, in the spirit of bringing the industry together. Join us on March 10-11 for a discussion on 2025, for our InsurTech Spring Conference, themed Catering to the Customer of 2025.

Upcoming InsurTech Events and Programs

InsurTech Spring 2021 Conference: Catering to the Customer of 2025 (Pre-registration)
Mar 10 – 11 | 2 Full-Days | Educational Content, Virtual Expo, and Networking | Virtual
– 75+ speakers, 20+ startup pitches, 2 global competition
– Two most active InsurTech communities in North

InsurTech NY Sponsors

Thank you to our sponsors for supporting the community: E2Value, EY, ClarionDoor, Locke Lord, Britecore, Guidewire, Eversheds Sutherland, EIS

InsurTech New York Area Deals and Opportunities

Discover a curated mix of November and early December insurance financings, exits, partnerships, and opportunities in the New York area.

Smartvid.io ($5M, IA Capital) Commercial Lines: AI-powered construction safety platform to help companies identify their highest risk projects and to act to prevent incidents from occurring.

Battleface ($12M, Greenlight Re) Personal Lines: Speciality travel insurance for travelers visiting or working internationally.

Centivo ($34M, B Capital Group) Health Lines: Administrator of self-funded health plans for employers.

Novidea ($15M, JAL Ventures) Multi-Line: cloud-based agency management system (AMS)

OneShield (Undisclosed, Bain Capital) P&C Lines: A portfolio of core system platforms for policy management, billing, claims, rating, and business intelligence.

CAIS Group ($50M, Eldridge) Wealth Management: financial technology platform for financial advisors who seek improved access to and education about alternative investment strategies.

DataRobot ($320M, Altimeter Capital) Multi-Line: Enterprise AI platform democratizing data science with end-to-end automation for building, deploying, and managing machine learning models.

FinPay Holding ($5M, Montreux Growth) Health Lines: Automating patient engagement to deliver cost transparency, education, and affordable payment options for patients.

Openly ($40M, AVP) Personal Lines: A technology-enabled, high-end home MGA.

Jornaya (Acquisition amount undisclosed, Verisk): Proprietary behavioral data to help marketing teams improve consumer engagement through an understanding of buying journeys.

Interested in Volunteering?

InsurTech NY is actively looking for individuals looking to connect deeper into the InsurTech community. If you are interested, email us at contact@insurtechny.com.

Best,
David and Tony
InsurTech NY Team

(Note: This is a post for attendees of Dec 10th Insurtech NY Event: Emerging Technologies. If you want to join this event, you can buy your tickets here.)

We created this guide to help you maximize your Core Systems event experience. 

Table of Contents

A. Win cool tech gear (e.g. Apple Airpod, Amazon Echo)

B. Access and prepare for networking (Do this now!)

C. Network on the day of the event

D. Watch the presentations

If you have any questions about the event, do not hesitate to reach out to us via email help@insurtechny.com. 
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A. Network with Grip and Win Tech Gear (How to Below)

Network with two attendees on 12/10 and you are added to the raffle. Networking runs from 3pm to 5pm ET. Raffles will be held at 5pm. To win, you must be present at the 5pm Zoom raffle.

You can win:

– Airpod Pro
– Chrome Cast
– Amazon Echo Dot

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B. Access and prepare for networking

1) Login: Use a desktop browser to login: Grip App

Login credentials were sent to you via email (check spam folder). Alternatively, you can “Request a reminder” to get the BadgeID sent to your email. 

2) Setup profile: Connect your Linkedin profile to build your Grip profile. The more information you add, the better matches you will get.

3) Find people to connect with. Couple options:

a. “See Recommendations” button. You will see a list of people that the system recommends based on your profile
b. “All attendees” link. You will see a list of attendees, which you can filter and sort to find those you are interested in meeting. 

4) Schedule meeting: find a person and select “Schedule a meeting” button. 

Select a 15 min time slot between 3pm and 5pm.

The location will be a virtual private video room, which will automatically be created 5 minutes before your meeting. You can also chat via text message with your meeting guest. We recommend leaving a number in there, in case the video doesn’t work. 

5) Accept (or reject) meeting: Other people might request a meeting with you. When they do, you will get an email like below:

You can also check all of your meetings in the “My Schedule” link on the left of the networking app. Scroll down, and you will see your meetings from 3pm onwards. 

Either way, you can choose to accept, message, reschedule or decline. Please take action on these, as you know how it feels to be left hanging.
________________________________________

C. Network on the day of the event

1) Find meeting: Go to your “My schedule” link, then click on the actual meeting you have already scheduled.

2) Join the meeting room: 5 minutes before the meeting start time, the “Open Virtual Meeting Room” button will be clickable.  You can click it to join the video meeting.

3) Have a successful meeting: Once you join, there is a Chance that audio will not work, especially if you have multiple audio options on your computer.  To get around this, you should click on the “Try opening the meeting in a new tab” link.

This will open a new window, which gives you options to change your audio. Click on the settings “Gear” button, and change your audio options.

You may need to check your browser settings as well. This is a common problem among browser based video conferencing app. Below is a guide to fix it on Google Chrome Browser. It’s for a different video conferencing app but the directions are still valid. Start with #2 in the guide: https://remo1.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/63000253364

5) Backup option – phone call maybe? If the above meeting method fails, just ask for a phone number and call or share your personal zoom link. You have options!

_______________________________________

D. Watch the live stream presentations

You can watch the presentation in the same networking app, or the zoom link provided in the email, Eventbrite page, or the calendar invite.

You just need an internet connection to watch the webinar. Once you are done with the presentations, you can start networking through the process described above.  

Then come back to the same live stream again at 5pm ET to watch the raffle.

Following the August announcement of the FINEOS acquisition of Limelight Health and PE acquisition of Majesco, Q4 has already become red hot with InsurTech deals. A short timeline of deal announcements highlights the trend:

• Oct 6: Bold Penguin acquires RiskGenius
• Oct 6: Clover Health merges with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings to go public
• Oct 7: Claim Central Consolidated acquires Livegenic
• Oct 28: Root raises $724 million in its initial public offering
• Nov 6: Insurity acquires CodeObjects
• Nov 9: Brown and Brown acquires CoverHound and CoverPolicy
• Nov 17: Advisen acquires Zywave

Analyzing the recent acquisitions, it is clear the strength of the market is multi-dimensional. From a traditional M&A perspective, Brown and Brown’s acquisition doubles down on the trend started by Prudential and Aon that carriers and brokers are looking to acquire new paths for distribution. Likewise, traditional insurance vendors like Insurity demonstrate that the market for product extensions for service providers is a viable exit route for startups.

Meanwhile, it is the public market and InsurTech consolidation trend that is new and most exciting. There now exists a crop of InsurTechs with cash flow and balance sheets that make it possible to consolidate with other InsurTechs. Bold Penguin is less than five years in the market. Likewise, Root is only in its fifth year and now a public company. In fact, according to Tushar Virmani from JP Morgan, in his presentation in our accelerator at least 15% of the tech IPOs this year are InsurTechs.

Investors can now have the confidence to place bets on InsurTechs knowing that a liquidity event can take at least five paths: insurer acquisition, tech provider acquisition, InsurTech acquisition, SPAC to the public market, or IPO.

In 2021, InsurTech NY plans to continue to highlight InsurTech deals and bring the founders who made it to exit to our panels and discussions.

Upcoming InsurTech Events and Programs

Emerging Technologies in Insurance: AI, RPA, IoT (Register at early-bird discount)

Dec 10 | 1PM – 3PM Educational Content and 3PM – 5PM Networking | Fully Virtual

– 2 Panels, 2 Ted Talks, 2 Hours of Networking

– Featuring: Allstate RPA leader and E2Value CEO

InsurTech NY Sponsors

Thank you to our sponsors for supporting the community: EIS, E2Value, Eversheds Sutherland, and EY.

InsurTech New York Area Deals and Opportunities

Discover a curated mix of early November insurance financings, exits, partnerships, and opportunities in the New York area.

• Lightico ($14M, Oxx VC) Multi-Line: Platform to help digitally collect forms, signatures, documents, and payments.
• Assurely ($3M, ATX Ventures) Commercial Lines: Embedded Insurance-as-a-Service platform for alternative distribution channels of commercial insurance.
• Fabric ($18M, CNO Financial) Life Lines: Direct to consumer life insurance platform bundled with a platform to create a will and organize financial documents.

BTV Accelerator (Applications open until Nov 30): Accelerator that brings broker-centric InsurTech startups together to provide seed-funding, a hyper-accelerated curriculum, and direct access to our Agency & Non-Agency Mentor circuit.

Interested in Volunteering?

InsurTech NY is actively looking for individuals looking to connect deeper into the InsurTech community. We are looking for a writer interested in helping us research trends related to our upcoming December event. If you are interested, email us at contact@insurtechny.com.