InsurTech Founders Are Often Not Insurance Industry Veterans

As InsurTech companies increase in number and scope, the P/C industry may be surprised about one thing: only a small number of founders may actually be insurance industry veterans.

So says, Tim Kunde, co-founder and managing director of Friendsurance, an InsurTech startup based in Berlin, Germany- a peer-to-peer online broker launched in 2010.

Kunde cited this and other InsurTech founder factoids as part of an Oct. 16 blog posting on the issue.

Kunde said he and his team based their findings on a look at several dozen InsurTech startups (compiled by the InsurTechTalk blog). The goal of gathering the information, he said, was to help startups in the space learn from each other.

Based on that company pool, Kunde and his team found that just 32 percent of the 99 InsurTech startup founders they looked at (including Friendsurance) came from the insurance industry. The rest were veterans of other startups, the financial sector, consulting and software companies.

Kunde himself began his career with Boston Consulting Group, where he advised companies on consumer goods and insurance matters.

Among their other discoveries:

• 30 Percent of the founders in this space earned their degrees at top U.S. universities. Broken down further, 13 percent earned their degrees at Harvard University, 8 percent did so at Stanford University, 9 percent graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 5 percent earned their stripes through a Columbia University/Oxford University program, and 6 percent came through Massachusetts-based Babson College.
• More than 56 percent of Insurtechs have 2 founders, and 15 percent have 3 founders. Only 24 percent have 1 founders.
• 94 percent of founders in the space are men, Kunde and his team found, reflecting the heavy male executive roster among many older, more traditional insurance companies.

• On a lighter note, the survey found that 15 percent of the founders “rock a beard.” Of that number, 75 percent, or 22 founders, had a closely trimmed beard – as does Kunde.

For the full blog entry, click here.