September 2020 – This report profiles 250 InsureTech startups—including Analytics Arms Dealers, Beneficial Bots, Creative Carriers, and Digital Distributors—from the point of view of their value to insurers as partners or suppliers. While most research and media focused on InsureTech startups is written for innovators and investors, this report for insurers focuses on two key questions: Does this matter to my company? And what can we learn from it?

Topics

• Types of InsureTechs. Novarica categorizes the startup environment for easy classification.
• Engaging with InsureTech. Additional approaches to InsureTech involvement exist for companies that are not ready to invest in a startup or startup fund.
• InsureTech Profiles. The 250 vendors in this report serve as a starting point for insurers learning about InsureTech.

Key Points and Findings

AI messaging is everywhere. Everyone’s talking about AI, but real AI is less clear. Even so, adoption of AI technologies like machine vision and natural language processing is growing across lines of business and use cases.

Insurance is going beyond direct online. Many startups are rethinking distribution, bringing products to consumers rather than simply enabling a direct online purchase.

Startups previously positioned as competitors are becoming partners. Many startup “carriers” are licensing their platforms to allow insurers to develop niche products and branch into new lines of business, though the effectiveness of this pivot is yet to be proven.