NEW YORK, March 12, 2021 — InsurTech NY, announced the winners of its 2021 Early-Stage InsurTech Competition at the InsurTech Spring Conference. Winners were selected by judging panels grouped by their background – angel investors, venture capitalists, carrier and brokers, and the Bermuda BDA. The winners received prizes worth $200K in total.

Carrier/Broker Prize: Tide Foundation
VC Investor Prize: Loadsure
Angel Investor Prize: Delos Insurance
Bermuda BDA Prize: RemitRix

Over 120 eligible startups applied to the competition. Startups were eligible if they had less than $250,000 in annual revenue. The judges selected winners who showed the most commercial potential. The selection process employed 26 judges including Avanta Ventures, Greenlight Re, Nationwide Ventures, Transverse Insurance, Gallagher, MGV, SixThirty, Park City Angels, and Anthemis.

“We are proud to highlight the 2021 global winners,” said David Gritz, Managing Director of InsurTech NY. “Helping high-potential early-stage startups ‘get discovered’ is necessary to foster a dynamic and sustainable InsurTech ecosystem.”

“Programs like this provide a crucial platform for emerging technologies,” said Michael Loewy, co-founder of Tide Foundation. “We plan to use this exposure to strengthen our position in the insurance vertical and expand our technology to reduce global cyber liability.”

“We are excited and honored to be selected as the angel investor prize winner,” said Kevin Stein, CEO of Delos Insurance. “New MGAs in markets like ours benefit from broad exposure because we can help provide new products for reinsurers, insurers, and brokers, and change the lives of policyholders that were non-renewed because of misclassification in wildfire zones.”

The four winners were selected from the top 13 finalists that presented at the InsurTech Spring Conference on March 10, 2021. The other nine original finalists included: Claimspace, Coastal Risk, Coverhero, Digisure, Dockflow, Finaeo, HealthyHealth, Safekeep, Startsure.

NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — InsurTech NY has opened the application window for their annual 2021 InsurTech Early-Stage Competition (www.insurtechny.com/competition).

The competition will award $200,000 in prizes to three winning teams. Startups will compete for the title of the company with the most commercial potential. Top teams will have the opportunity to present their business to a panel of judges at the InsurTech Spring Conference held March 10th-11th, co-hosted by InsurTech NY and InsurTech Hartford.

The finalists from last year’s competition gained investment and broad exposure to their business as a result of the competition. “The InsurTech NY competition has been a tremendous opportunity for us to get many more people excited about our unique offering,” said Itai Ben-Zaken, CEO of Agilius and winner of the 2020 early-stage competition.

Judges for the competition will be evaluating startups for potential investment or pilot opportunities. They comprise angel investors, venture capitalists, and insurance carriers including New York Angels, Park City Angels, Anthemis, Sure Ventures, Transverse, Nationwide, GreenlightRe, and Grange Insurance.

“The hardest part for any InsurTech is gaining the initial traction and relationships necessary to get to a first customer,” said David Gritz, co-founder of InsurTech NY. “By supporting the next crop of early-stage InsurTechs, we can create a sustainable ecosystem for insurance innovation.”

Early-stage companies eligible for the competition are InsurTechs that had less than $250,000 in revenue in 2020. The top 10 finalists will be invited to present at the InsurTech Spring Conference and will be announced in early March 2021. The deadline for submissions is January 29, 2021.

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

With our accelerator program more than halfway done, understanding the startups in the cohort would not be possible without knowing the story of how the cohort came to be…

New York has always been a FinTech dominated city. It was a natural home for FinTech with the vast majority of banks headquartered in the City. However, there has always been healthy competition with San Francisco for the best talent, funding, and startup HQs.

Flashback to 2015, InsurTech was in its infancy; Lemonade (NYC), Policy Genius (NYC), Zenefits (SF), and Hippo (SF) just started. Meanwhile, the support ecosystem – VCs, corporate innovation teams, event organizers, and accelerators were nascent. At first, the Bay Area earned the title as the InsurTech hub when SVIA held its first dedicated InsurTech conference, Zenefits raised $500 million to become a Unicorn, and ITC chose its home in Las Vegas.

The intervening years were marked by a back-and-forth swapping between SF and NYC for the title of top InsurTech city. In 2019, Carrier Management named NYC the InsurTech capital and we started InsurTech NY.

Our vision was to create a sandbox in the NYC metro area where InsurTechs could play and gain an unfair advantage. We also saw a need for growth-stage startups between late seed-stage and Series B to cross the chasm to profitability and develop additional carrier/broker partnerships.

To support those startups, we partnered with 18 insurance carriers and brokers to launch our accelerator and selected 22 startups:

Life and Annuities Lines: Amenity Analytics, Best Fit, Breathe Life, Everyday Life, Fenris, Gerald App, Insurmi, IXN, Sensely, Sorcero, and Vymo

NEW YORK, Oct. 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — InsurTech NY, the largest InsurTech community in the New York metro area, announced today its growth-stage InsurTech accelerator cohort.

22 startups were selected to participate in its insurance carrier and broker sponsored program that focuses on providing resources to support traction, talent, and financing. The program will provide access to insurance carriers and brokers looking to deploy new technologies and provide financial backing to digital managing general agencies (MGAs).

“Our member carriers and brokers worked closely with us to hand-select startups that align with their organizational goals,” said David Gritz, InsurTech NY Managing Director. “The goal of the program is to help startups accelerate the process of building long-term strategic relationships and gain knowledge on the best way to do so.”

Selected startups include:

Life and Annuities Lines: Amenity Analytics, Best Fit, Breathe Life, Everyday Life, Fenris, Gerald App, Insurmi, IXN, Sensely, Sorcero, and Vymo

Property and Casualty Lines: Assurely, Dealer Policy, Ecopia, GradientAI, Guardhog, Harbor.ai, Honcho, Neural Metrics, Pinpoint Predictive, Relay, and TrustLayer

For traction, 18 member corporations will work closely with the startups to establish proof of concepts and partnerships. For talent acquisition, startups will be invited to present at the InsurTech Matchmaking Expo on Oct 29. For fundraising, startups will work with 17 insurance-focused corporate VCs, traditional VCs, and angel investors. The program will run for a total of six weeks, ending on November 12.