AIP News RoundUp – EP 02 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – September – We Are Living In a New Reality Now

15 Sep 2019Posted By Michael Waitze

Host

Theresa Blissing

Theresa is the founder of the Asia InsurTech Podcast and a Thought Leader on innovation in insurance in Asia. She has worked for ten years for leading multinational insurers in Europe and Asia before turning to management consulting and venture building with the goal of transforming the insurance industry and helping shape its future in the region.

Host

Michael Waitze

Michael Waitze worked in Global Finance for more than 20 years, employed by firms like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, primarily in Tokyo. Michael lived and worked in Tokyo from February 1990 until December 2011. Michael always maintained a particular focus on how technology could be used to make businesses more efficient and to drive P/L growth. Michael is a leader in the digital media space, building one of the biggest and fastest-growing podcast listener bases in the region. His AsiaTechPodcast.com show has listeners in more than 170 countries and his company, Michael Waitze Media produces some of Asia’s most popular podcasts.

Host

Rahul Mathur

Rahul is the Startup lead at Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab in London. Prior to joining Accenture, he was an Insurance Product Manager at Laka Insurance, a London headquartered early stage InsurTech start-up which recently won at the British Insurance Awards 2019. Rahul holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the University of Warwick. He is an Ambassador at the Asia InsurTech podcast.

Halfway through September, it is time for another InsurTech news roundup! Singapore’s CXA was in the news announcing it was looking for fresh funding and its desire to become Southeast Asia’s first InsurTech unicorn. It also maintained that it expects to be profitable by 2020. Axinan, another Singapore based company, was back in the news announcing a partnership with Indonesian eCommerce player Bukalapak.

Away from Southeast Asia, we are seeing a lot of developments coming out of China. PingAn has announced its cooperation between affiliate OneConnect Financial Technology and German company finleap to offer its FinTech software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology to the European market. China is expanding rapidly into the global insurance market while strengthening its position as the leader in AI. Adding to this is the announcement of the USD 150 million IPO in the United States of Chinese online insurance platform Huize.

What really sets Asia apart from the West is the insurance activities leveraging platform companies like Grab as well as Super Apps like WeChat. Tencent is leading Xiaobang Guihua’s Series B equity funding, an insurance advisory platform running on WeChat.

Other companies mentioned in this episode:

Surge, Sequoia, Office of Insurance Commission, LINE, GoJek, Tokopedia, Frank.co.th, Roojai.com, Sunday, Go! Insurance, Rabbit Finance, Lazada, DocDoc, and Qoala