CURATED INSURTECH NEWS | What’s going on in the D-A-CH region?

What is new and what is hot in the Fin- and InsurTech space? I have selected some interesting and groundbreaking news and information from the past few months from start-ups and incumbents in the insurance and financial service space in the German speaking countries (“D-A-CH” region).

FinTech                                   

With the European FinTech Association (EFA), European FinTechs want to participate more in the realization of a European market for digital financial services. Too many obstacles still slow down innovation and growth. EFA wants to represent its interests in politics and regulators with a strong voice. According to EFA, providers that are organized in the association represent a variety of banking and financial services ranging from payment to lending, banking, robo-advice, identity verification and software-as-a-service.¹

One member of EFA, Scalable Capital, is expanding its business model: Scalable Capital will also offer a broker app in the future. Providers such as Trade Republic and Justtrade are facing strong competition.²

The new PSD2 interfaces are used to a very manageable extent in practice³. Surprised?

Tech companies like Amazon, Apple or Google are pushing into the financial industry with (almost) all their power. Their advantage in comparison to traditional banks is their reputation. Here is a Swiss perspective on this.⁴

More from Switzerland: “Waste not, want not” is probably not the slogan of young target groups. However, new forms of savings and digital investment solutions might make the difference. The area of pension solutions, which has been disregarded digitally for a long time, is booming now and numerous providers are pushing into the market. Viac, the pioneer in the Swiss market, is now expanding its offer.⁵

InsurTech

There are many reasons for insurers to invest in InsurTechs: good investment, not miss any innovation, pressure from supervisory board, playground for board members and so on. Here is a list of InsurTech investments the large insurance players such as Axa and MunichRe made.⁶

More than two years after entering into a cooperation⁷, DVAG (probably the largest sales network in Germany) and FinLeap (a company and fintech ecosystem builder in Germany) launched their first jointly developed tool: an app that aims to support the employees of DVAG.⁸

After the brilliant IPO of Lemonade, IPO forerunners like DFV and some IPO-wannabes are crunching their figures and undergo themselves a comparison. CEO und figurehead of DFV, Dr. Stefan Knoll, has a clear view: “Our stock is still significantly undervalued”.⁹ After the latest capital increase, DFV announced to continue its growth strategy. This also includes the development of new risk carriers, also for life insurance, as well as the development of new products.¹⁰

FinSurTech

Those who regard FinSurTech (i.e. merger of InsurTech and FinTech) as the fuel for a renaissance of bancassurance, please watch out this initiative of Allianz.¹¹ I would call this “InsurBanking” and I believe it’s the future!

#lockdown challenge in insurance

As CoVid-19 hostages the entire earth and as the life insurance industry believes it can go without innovation, an actuary and product freak is defying this. This guy is me. Please find here the playlist of my video documentation on YouTube about my attempt of bringing innovation to life insurance during corona crisis.¹² It is important to distinguish different levels of my initiative:

• level 1: the fully new product approach for saving products as a sustainable solution for low interest rate environment
• level 2: the project as a prototype for a rapid product development
• level 3: the entire initiative as blueprint for trend-setting cooperation enabling insurers and their cooperation partner to bring new and innovative products to the market and to better prepare for the ecosystem age.

What’s next?

Well, we can’t avoid an insurance service directive (ISD) in analogy to the payment service directive (PSD). Believe it or not, this ISD will hit most insurers unexpectedly. In parallel, and as the need for new products and digital transformation increases, a new generation of enabler mushrooms. They target sales channels as well as insurance companies and offer a broad vendor’s tray with all ingredients for an optimized (insurance) value chain.

And, by the way, Tesla is searching for insurance experts in Germany.¹³

All mentioned sources are listed below. All thoughts and opinions are my own. All information without any liability. No claim to completeness.

Sources

¹ https://www.it-finanzmagazin.de/fintechs-gruenden-neuen-europa-verband-efa-107663/

² https://financefwd.com/de/angriff-auf-trade-republic-scalable-capital-startet-neobroker/

³ https://finanz-szene.de/digital-banking/hier-kommen-die-nutzerzahlen-fuer-die-psd2-schnittstellen/

⁴ https://www.finews.ch/news/finanzplatz/41337-amazon-apple-starbucks-banken-reputation-fintech-big-tech

⁵ https://www.moneytoday.ch/news/es-rappelt-hoerbar-im-karton-der-fintech-vorsorgeloesungen-neues-von-viac-frankly-selma-und-sparbat/

⁶ https://paymentandbanking.com/insurances-investing-in-insurtech-startups-uebersicht-deutschland/

⁷ https://www.dvag.de/dvag/das-unternehmen/presse/pressemitteilungen/dvag-und-finleap-gruenden-deutsche-fintech-solutions-gmbh.html

⁸ https://www.handelsblatt.com/finanzen/finanzberater-edition/fintech-kooperation-deutsche-vermoegensberatung-launcht-berater-app-mithilfe-von-finleap/25851666.html

⁹ https://www.deraktionaer.de/artikel/fintech-versicherung-banken/dfv-chef-nach-lemonade-ipo-unsere-aktie-ist-nach-wie-vor-erheblich-unterbewertet-20203740.html

¹⁰ https://www.experten.de/2020/07/08/dfv-plant-gruendung-von-drei-tochterunternehmen/

¹¹ https://www.deraktionaer.de/artikel/fintech-versicherung-banken/banken-herhoeren-allianz-portal-nimmt-formen-an-20201384.html

¹² https://bit.ly/LDCPLAY

¹³ https://teslamag.de/news/verantwortliche-gesucht-eigene-tesla-versicherung-bald-auch-deutschland-28678