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

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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.

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.

Guest
Hugh Terry

Hugh Terry, the founder of The Digital Insurer, is an experienced insurance professional with more than 30 years’ experience in the insurance industry covering insurance companies, business consulting as well as successful set-up and exit from his own businesses. Hugh is an actuary by profession. The Digital Insurer is the world’s largest knowledgebase and online community of more than 40,000 professionals who share a common purpose of working together to accelerate the digital transformation of insurance. The TDI Academy launched in 2020 is dedicated to providing best in class learning and development on digital insurance to help as many people as possible be part of our digital future.

Guest
Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps, Founder of The Digital Insurer, has over 30 years experience across Life, GI and Asset Management businesses within insurers, consulting firms and start-ups. He started his career in intermediated distribution. Previously Aviva MD & KPMG lead partner for Insurance Advisory & Digital Innovation in HK. The Digital Insurer is the world’s largest knowledgebase and online community of more than 40,000 professionals who share a common purpose of working together to accelerate the digital transformation of insurance. The TDI Academy, launched in 2020, is dedicated to providing best in class learning and development on digital insurance to help as many people as possible be part of our digital future.

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.

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