AIP News RoundUp – Episode 09 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – December 26 – Year End Round Up

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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.

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.

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.

2019 has undeniably been a busy year in terms of InsurTech in Asia. It has been the year InsurTech accelerated across Southeast Asia. Michael, Theresa, and Rahul discussed which companies, in their opinion, had a major impact in 2019. 

Ride-hailing service and super app GRAB has made big waves by entering the insurance space with powerful partners. In January they announced their JV with Zhong An Technology and in August launched their first micro-insurance product for critical illness in partnership with Singaporean insurer Income. Grab has also formed a JV with Ping An Good Doctor and launched the first O2O healthcare solution in Indonesia. 

PingAn is probably the insurance incumbent that is most active in the InsurTech space in Asia. Through their investment arm Ping An Voyager Fund the company is invested in several InsurTechs across Asia and the EU including German InsurTech Joonko. Rahul has analyzed the PingAn strategy in one of his blog posts.  

Other companies that have impressed the AIP news team include Axinan with their Labuan insurance license and their rapid expansion within Southeast Asia, Acko with their continuous growth and their latest funding round towards the end of 2019 as well as SingLife which is transforming from InsurTech to FinTech.

We had all the movers and shakers on the podcast. Please find some of their the episodes linked below:

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