Insurance Technology: InsurTech NY Winners; $3M in GloveBox; Hippo’s Claims Partners; AXIS-Elpha Cyber Service
The Winners Are
InsurTech NY announced the winners of its 2021 Early-Stage InsurTech Competition at the InsurTech Spring Conference on March 10.
The winners received prizes worth $200K in total.
Winners were selected by judging panels grouped by their background—angel investors, venture capitalists, carriers and brokers, and the Bermuda BDA:
- Carrier/Broker Prize: Tide Foundation
- VC Investor Prize: Loadsure
- Angel Investor Prize: Delos Insurance
- Bermuda BDA Prize: RemitRix
The four winners were selected from the top 13 finalists that presented at the InsurTech Spring Conference. The other finalists were Claimspace, Coastal Risk, Coverhero, Digisure, Dockflow, Finaeo, HealthyHealth, Safekeep and Startsure.
More than 120 eligible startups applied to the competition. The judges selected winners that showed the most commercial potential. The selection process employed 26 judges including Avanta Ventures, Greenlight Re, Nationwide Ventures, Transverse Insurance, Gallagher, MGV, SixThirty, Park City Angels and Anthemis.
Source: InsurTech NY
GloveBox Raises $3 Million
Prelude, the venture fund at Mercato Partners, announced leading a $3 million early investment round for GloveBox, a mobile insurtech development firm. Additional participants in the round include Heffernan Insurance Brokers, an insurance agency out of California, and other industry partners. The investment will help GloveBox enhance and expand the platform for both agencies and policyholders.
Co-founders Ryan and Andy Mathisen, Sean Mulhern and Alex Rolex created GloveBox based on their experiences at Colorado Insurance. They set out to provide a completely tech-forward mobile marketplace for independent agencies.
GloveBox enables customers to access all policy documents directly from their insurance carrier, pay a bill and initiate a claim through a mobile and web application.
Since its launch in March 2020, GloveBox has signed up more than 100 agencies.
Sources: Prelude, GloveBox
Hippo Partners
Home insurance managing general agency Hippo has formed two new partnerships to boost the speed and processing of its back-end customer claims services.
San Antonio-based Claimatic’s SaaS platform is designed as a matchmaking service between the claimant and adjustor. California-based Hippo said it will work with Claimatic and Five Sigma to automate the pairing of claimants and service-providers, from adjusters to managed repair network partners and vetted contractors, and provide them with information quickly.
Hippo will use Five Sigma’s cloud-native product and machine-learning software to identify the severity of a claim at the earliest possible point when a loss is identified. Five Sigma, which is based in Israel, sets reserving suggestions, and reports on reserves over time, according to partnership announcement.
Source: Carrier Management
Cyber Risk Mitigation
AXIS Insurance is partnering with cybersecurity company Elpha Secure to focus on mitigating the risk of common cyber threats.
Elpha Secure produces Elphaware, a Software as a Service (SaaS) application used to mitigate cyber risks, and other cyber security tools for small and micro businesses. Features include encrypted backups of critical data, multi-factor authentication for remote access, creation of a Virtual Private Network and insider threat anomaly detection.
The service also protects against social engineering and malware attacks such as ransomware, and it is designed to help small businesses recover quickly when an incident happens.
Sources: Hippo and AXIS Insurance