AIP News RoundUp – EP 49 – Theresa Blissing, Hugh Terry, and Simon Phipps – The BattleGrounds May Change a Bit

We end the year with a trend that we have been following throughout 2021 – embedded insurance. A pioneer in this space, Cover Genius, has just announced a new partnership with Agoda to offer embedded travel protection in Southeast Asia. We have talked about this only recently with Cover Genius’ MD for Southeast Asia, Arijit Chakraborty. Listen to the episode here.  Adding to the trend of embedded insurance, we have seen lots of movement in the device protection space. bolttech extends its partnership into Europe. The InsurTech unicorn is now offering Samsung Care+ in 13 markets globally. We recently spoke to bolttech’s group CEO, Rob Schimek, about this partnership and bolttech’s plans going forward. Listen to Rob’s episode here. Another player in this field is US-based Likewize which has just acquired Optus Insurance Services in Australia. Likewize has operations in over 30 countries and is, similar to bolttech, offering services beyond traditional insurance coverage. The third player in this space is Singapore-based InsurTech Igloo. Igloo signed a partnership with Malaysia’s Pine Labs to offer Phone Screen Protection and Mobile 360 protection to its platform users.  Further, Singapore-based Insurtech Gigacover expanded its operations into the Philippines. We had the founder, Amerson Lin, on the show recently and talked about how the startup has pivoted its business model since the outbreak of COVID-19. Listen to Amerson’s episode here. In Hong Kong, Blue has launched a new refundable critical illness coverage and is coming up with unique marketing ideas to get the attention of consumers. In Malaysia, Munich Re announced that Tokio Marine Life Insurance Malaysia (“TMLM”) has selected ALLFINANZ SPARK from Munich Re Automation Solutions. It is an interesting development that reinsurers are helping insurance incumbents source suitable startups. We wonder if we will see more of this in 2022.  What we think we will see more of in 2022 are partnerships between insurance incumbents and startups. Bank of China Group (BOCG) Insurance has announced a partnership with CoverGo. The InsurTech’s insurance platform will allow BOCG to build products faster with no-code, increase distribution through new digital portals, and improve policy & claims admin through automation.  Listen to the episode to find out what other trends the AIP News Roundup team is predicting for 2022. The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 49 – Theresa Blissing, Hugh Terry, and Simon Phipps – The BattleGrounds May Change a Bit appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.