Michael Waitze recently spoke with Kobi Bendelak, the CEO of InsurTech Israel, which is both a consulting business and a fund that invests in early-stage InsurTech startups. Kobi has had a more than two-decade career in the insurance industry, including being the founder and CEO of Reshef Insurance Brokers, which was eventually sold to Generali. Kobi is a renowned expert in building and scaling InsurTech businesses and is a mentor at three of the world’s best InsurTech accelerators, including StartupBootCamp.
Kobi believes that the biggest trend currently in the Israeli InsurTech space is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the onset of CyberInsurance…insuring threats of cyber attacks and also working with insurance companies and startups to develop tools to fight cybersecurity in general, not just insure against it. Kobi expects a lot more innovation in the CyberInsurance space, as the incumbent providers are still trying to figure out exactly what they are insuring.
One of his investee companies is Kovrr. Kovrr has built a sophisticated cyber risk modeling platform that delivers real-time insights on catastrophic cyber risk exposure. This fits nicely into Kobi’s investment thesis, which is to only invest in companies solving real problems for the core of the insurance business and that are building technologies solely for the insurance agency.
Kobi travels the world supporting his investments, recently traveling to InsureTech Connect in LasVegas with a prominent delegation from Israel. Finally, we discussed what incumbent insurance players need to do in the context of all of the fast-moving innovation in InsurTech…his answer was great, “Create an environment for disruption.” Dusruption is going to keep happening and the only way not to get left out is to ensure you have created an environment in which innovation and disruption can thrive.
Other companies mentioned in this episode:
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