How Anthemis Is Betting on the Future

The InsurTech startup companies that Matthew Jones cites in the accompanying article are all companies in which his firm, Anthemis, has an investment.

• Xapix describes itself as a data orchestration solution for any industry. (See blog item, “Your data. Any way you want it” at www.xapix.io/blog/your-data-any-way-you-want-it)

“Using Xapix, companies can access, use and distribute data faster and easier…It is a breakthrough solution for any organization struggling with data coming from different sources and feeding into new products and services,” Xapix says on its website, noting that it is used by mobility companies, such as Daimler Fleetboard, BMW and Goodyear.

Xapix, which features an “intuitive drag-and-drop interface to connect different systems and leverage internal as well as external data,” is expanding to new industries and verticals.

Specific to auto insurance, Xapix aims to make it easier for insurers to partner with OEMs to offer usage-based insurance products—with product features that make it easier for insurers to aggregate and distribute data to make this happen. (www.xapix.io/xapix-for-auto-insurance)

• Humanising Autonomy, a startup founded by former students of Imperial College London, offers an analytic platform that predicts pedestrian behavior. Jones told Carrier Management Claims Editor Jim Sams that the Humanising Autonomy product is similar to a plug-in. It interacts with other technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, through an application program interface. It predicts what pedestrians will do next by using 90 attributes such as eye direction, whether the person is using a cellphone, and how close he or she is to the curb, and it can send alerts when a pedestrian is detected in the path of an autonomous vehicle.

Jones said Humanising Autonomy technology can also be used to make factories safer when robots work alongside humans. (“Autonomous Vehicles: InsurTech Investors Push for a Front Row Seat,” Aug. 21, 2019 by Jim Sams at carriermag.com/2rzve)

• Flock offers fully flexible drone insurance. “In a couple of taps, get covered for an hour, day or month,” the website says, describing on-demand insurance available for purchase only when a drone operator needs it and a flexible monthly policy to “get covered anywhere, anytime.”

Allianz announced the initial Flock Cover app insurance product in July 2017—pay-as-you-fly liability insurance up to £10 million, tailored to each flight, including equipment insurance for commercial users. “Pilots will be fully insured for their flight time, within a specified geographical region—all of which is customizable at the point of sale or can be scheduled in advance,” said AGCS, Allianz’s corporate insurance carrier. (“Allianz Teams With InsurTech Startup to Debut On-Demand Drone Insurance in UK,” July 17, 2017 at carriermag.com/iexf9)

• Trōv, one of the first InsurTech’s profiled by Carrier Management, offered on-demand single-item insurance when it debuted in Australia in 2016. The founder of the online insurance broker, Scott Walchek, described the evolution of Trōv from what was a high-end inventory service in the cloud originally launched in 2013 to a “just-in-time” insurer of specific items three years later. “A blanket [homeowners insurance] policy today covers your guitar when you leave it at home, but it doesn’t cover it when you’re taking it on the road to play at a gig. Meanwhile, it covers an old recliner you couldn’t care less for. That’s a pretty archaic product disconnected from the real need,” he said, summarizing the rationale. (“Treasure Trōv: A Serial Entrepreneur’s Path to On-Demand Single-Item Insurance,” Nov. 20, 2016 at carriermag.com/zvu7m)

More recently, Trōv announced that its on-demand insurance for things is available in 13 U.S. states and that the company continues to expand into verticals including the gig economy, fleet mobility and “last-mile” transportation (i.e., scooters and bikes), as well as passengers and items traveling in autonomous vehicles. For example, in December 2017, Google’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, partnered with Trōv to provide trip-based insurance coverage underwritten by a nonadmitted affiliate of Munich Re. And in mid-August 2019, Trōv announced the launch of a portfolio of end-to-end digital, white-labeled insurance products designed to be rapidly deployed by financial organizations and insurers in partnership with Lloyds Banking Group, the UK’s largest retail financial services provider.