InsurTech is booming in European Tech

Future50 - the top Insurtechs in Europe

Sønr and InsurTech Insights have compiled an impressive list of the top 50 InsurTechs in Europe. Combining a voting panel of awesome and experienced talent with the Sønr Index that evaluated millions of data points across 5 categories, Future50 is the result; a comprehensive list of insurance technology start-ups and early-stage companies.

And it shows that having lagged behind almost every other industry in terms of innovation, digitisation and customer satisfaction, InsurTech has emerged as one of the most exciting parts of the European tech boom.

5 trends driving insurance innovation

1. Distribution disrupted

"Competition for consumer attention has never been more intense, and insurers are increasingly having to meet consumers wherever they are. Gone are the days of expecting customers to buy, renew and repeat without scrutiny.

Now, InsurTechs are experimenting with distribution techniques to make insurance feel like a product rather than a tax. "

Examples include;

Penni.io (#8 in the list) is empowering carriers to bring embedded insurance products to market, so that they can distribute policies across any sales channel with no code.

Bsurance (#32) engineers cloud-based products to be fully embedded at the point of sale

2. Only pay for what you need

"If you have a car, the odds are that it’s been sitting in the garage for much of the last 18 months. Customers across the board have found themselves paying premiums for unused policies and over-insured risks.

We have seen a trend towards insurers mobilising telematics and data analytics to enable usage-based insurance policies.

For instance, in auto insurance, risk assessments can be made based on how much time a car spends on the road, and through analysis of driving behaviour."

Examples include:

Amodo (#30) is a platform that enables usage based products through increasing customer touchpoints and gamification of insurance.

Blocksure (#48) leverages blockchain technology to power flexible, on-demand policies from traditional annual, to fractional usage policies for daily, or even hourly, cover.

3. Raising untapped opportunities

"The insurance industry has often been notorious for arbitrary exclusions and not meeting the needs of underserved consumers. Disruptors in the industry, especially with life and health lines, are changing that. Disrupting sleepy parts of the industry, and serving the underserved, has become central to the emerging insurance revolution."

Examples include:

Asistensi (#14) works to open up digital-first health insurance solutions so that migrants can continue caring for relatives and loved ones back home.

YuLife (#6) has seen huge growth in the past year. Their gamification of life insurance is engaging younger consumers in innovative ways, and reinforcing the value proposition of life insurance for a new generation.

4. Insuring a changing world

"Climate change is no longer theoretical, but a present and increasingly visible danger. The implications for the insurance industry are profound. Catastrophe management and climate underwriting are increasingly central to a number of consumer and commercial lines as we enter an era of recurring climate risks.

Insurtechs have entered the market set on modernising risk assessments to match these emerging risks. They are using data analytics and sophisticated parametric underwriting and empowering their partners to better understand highly localised, region-specific risks. "

Examples include;

Descartes Underwriting (#4) builds parametric underwriting solutions to enable their partners to better understand the risk of natural disasters.

Oasis Loss Modelling Framework (#15) has created an open-source framework to give universal access to critical climate risk data.

5. Wellness as the new normal

"Wellness and wellbeing have been brought more sharply into focus by the pandemic. In 2020, McKinsey found that 17% of Europeans feel lonely ‘most or all of the time’, and the impact of a decline in mental health is being felt across the healthcare ecosystem.

This shift towards increased customer engagement and touchpoints marks a fundamental development for the insurer-consumer relationships: from the purely transactional to more of a partnership. The pandemic has heightened the urgency for insurers to focus on wellness and wellbeing around health and life lines of insurance.

Serious claims can be prevented by interventions by insurers early on, and health and life insurers are more incentivised than ever to promote healthier behaviours among their customers."

Examples include;

Thrive Therapeutic Software (#32) puts employee mental health at the heart of their proposition, designed as it is to prevent, screen and manage mental health conditions for employees.

Download the Future50 report for free

The report is a comprehensive review and must-read directory of the top 50 InsurTechs in Europe.

You can download the report for free here.

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The author, Rick Huckstep,