Quantemplate closes $12m funding round
Who’s involved: Quantemplate, a provider of cloud-based automated data solutions for the re/insurance industry; and five venture capital investors.
What’s happening: The insurtech startup has raised more than $12m in a recent funding round led by Route Sixty-Six Ventures and Transamerica Ventures, with participation from Anthemis Group, Allianz X and Insight Catastrophe Group.
Significance of development: The funding will be used to expand global sales and marketing efforts and grow the platform’s capabilities. The firm has approximately 20 customers using the platform.
QBE uses Corax to manage cyber risk exposure
Who’s involved: Cyber risk modelling firm Corax; and QBE European Operations, the European business of Australian insurer QBE.
What’s happening: QBE will use Corax’s platform to underwrite and manage cyber risk exposure.
Significance of development: Erica Constance, cyber portfolio manager at QBE, said: “The Corax platform helps us assess the overall exposure of a risk to the QBE portfolio and enables us to provide a more stable and consistent product to our customers.”
Transamerica teams up with FIDx
Who’s involved: US life insurer Transamerica; and Fiduciary Exchange (FIDx), a platform to integrate annuity sales with investment products.
What’s happening: The parties have struck a deal to provide annuities to investors and join the Insurance Exchange platform, which acts as a bridge between insurance carriers and wealth management platforms.
Significance of development: The integration will allow advisors participating in Insurance Exchange to have access to Transamerica's advisory annuities.
Swiss Re and Pioneer to launch telematics solution for insurers
Who’s involved: Swiss Re; and car electronics company Pioneer.
What’s happening: The parties have developed a telematics solution that provides motor insurers with better and more personalised risk assessment, while supporting safer driving behaviour. The solution will be integrated in Swiss Re's telematics app Coloride and will be launched globally early next year.
Significance of development: Coloride assigns a risk score to each driver that an insurer can use to calculate a usage-based insurance premium. By offering a financial incentive to cautious drivers and flagging risky behaviour, insurers can encourage responsible driving.
Former regulator joins Spixii as advisor
Who’s involved: Independent consultant Michael Sicsic; and insurance chatbot developer Spixii.
What’s happening: Sicsic has joined London-based Spixii as an advisor to the directors. He will also help onboard new clients.
Significance of development: Sicsic has more than 20 years of experience in financial services and is a former supervisor of the general insurance retail sector at the UK’sFinancial Conduct Authority (FCA). Renaud Million, chief executive and co-founder of Spixii, said the company was “entering a new chapter of scale”, adding: “We are pleased to consolidate this phase with the support of Michael.”
Old Mutual uses AWS to speed up innovation
Who’s involved: South African insurer Old Mutual; and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud provider from Amazon.
What’s happening: The insurer has chosen AWS as its cloud provider and will migrate its digital customer platforms, core insurance applications and product administration systems to AWS. Old Mutual will shut down its data centres by early 2022.
In addition, Old Mutual is integrating AWS’s analytics and machine learning services into its business processes to build more personalised customer-facing applications.
Significance of development: Johnson Idesoh, chief information officer at Old Mutual, said: “With AWS, we can rapidly experiment at lower costs and push the successful experiments into production faster, allowing us to improve the experience for existing customers and attract new ones.”