AIP News RoundUp – Episode 13 – Rahul Mathur and Lyndon Reid – February 28 – The Too Hard Bucket Came Into Play

01 Mar 2020Posted By Michael Waitze

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 130 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.

Guest

Lyndon Reid

Lyndon has worked in and around the insurance industry for the past 25 years with extensive experience in underwriting, distribution and business development across Asia Pacific and the USA.

We round out February by welcoming Lyndon Reid as a permanent member of the AIP News RoundUp team!

The team started by looking at the recent announcement by SwissRe’s iptiQ platform that it will partner with Ikea in Singapore and Switzerland to offer on-line home insurance to Ikea customers. We see this as part of a growing push by reinsurers to access distribution channels for the new product innovations they are developing. The team sensed this may reflect a degree of frustration by reinsurers with the pace of innovation at the primary carrier level.

The coronavirus outbreak is dominating the news cycle at present. The team examined the reaction of a number of players in the region such as Etiqa, Chubb and AIA who are offering various forms of free COVID 19 cover. The overwhelming sentiment was the speed of these offerings would not be possible without technology or digital means of distribution. Showing yet again the power of digital!

SingLife is in the news yet again. The digital life insurer has announced that has received regulatory approval to commence operations in the Philippines.

Rahul explored the expansion of CareVoice’s “Care” insurance portfolio in Hong Kong. The focus is on a platform (partnering with Generali) for health benefits aimed at startups called StartupCare. This prompted a look at the growing trend of products and solutions aimed at the startup company market by companies such as Vouch and Neat.

To wrap things up we looked at Saphron’s attempt at a product innovation – Heartbreak Cover. More of a gimmick than anything else, the team was left somewhat heartbroken themselves by this lackluster product…