AIP News RoundUp – EP 53 – Theresa Blissing and Simon Phipps – The Tokenization of Pretty Much Everything

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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
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.

April has been a busy month in InsurTech in Asia and we have seen lots of development in the digital asset and cyber space. Hong Kong virtual insurer OneDegree announced a multi-year partnership with Munich Re to launch digital asset insurance under the brand name OneInfinity. We had Alex Leung, the co-founder of OneDegree on the show earlier this year. Listen to the episode here. If you would like to hear more about OneDegree and their different ventures, make sure not to miss their webinar in May. You can sign up here

Healthcare platform GOQii  not only announced an extended Series C investment of $10 million from Animoca Brands but also its plans to launch a health metaverse. Animoca Brands is a global leader in gamification and blockchain and GOQii will collaborate with Animoca Brands and its ecosystem companies to develop offerings that leverage blockchain tokens and gamification in preventive healthcare.

In Israel, Surance.io  has received $4 million from Tech Mahindra in return for a 25% equity stake. Surance.io supports insurers to launch cyber protection products with a white-label solution.

Apart from digital assets and cyber, sustainability is the other major topic this month. Singlife with Aviva has appointed European sustainability data provider Matter to provide a comprehensive view of its sustainability performance. In Australia, Zurich has partnered with InterEarth on CO2 removal. The insurer targets net-zero emissions across its operations by 2030.

The VC world has been busy as well with Tokio Marine Holdings launching Tokio Marine Future Fund, a $42 million corporate venture capital fund that is looking to invest  in early-stage startups around the world and in Hong Kong, we have two major fund-raising news. Qumata, an InsurTech focused on the health and life insurance industry ecosystem welcomed Tencent as an investor in its US$23M series A funding. And InsurTech enabler Coherent raised $ 75 million  in Series B funding led by Maverick Capital. Listen to our episode with founder and CEO John Brisco here

If you want to hear more about InsurTech in Asia and would like to join the conversation, make sure to join our virtual event on May 12th. In collaboration with the Asia InsurTech Podcast, The Digital Insurer and ITC Asia we will talk about What’s next in InsurTech and hear from Tricia Wong, the director of ITC Asia what to expect from their major physical event in Singapore this June. Sign up for the event here. We will be using the conferencing service Remo which allows us to enable networking of all participants. So join the event and join the conversation.

If you are planning to attend ITC Asia and don’t have any tickets yet, use “AIP” as a discount code to get 20% off your tickets. You can get tickets here

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