2022 has been a year of macro-realism (for many InsurTechs, investors and risk partners alike), and micro (individual) company hardship.  February 6th 2023

Gallagher Re Global InsurTech report for Q4 2022

Key Findings for Q4 2022:

• Quarterly Insurtech funding for Q4 fell to the lowest level since Q1 2020, decreasing 57.0% quarter on quarter from $2.35 billion in Q3 to $1.01 billion in Q4.
• Insurtech deals dropped to 106 in Q4, the lowest number of deals since Q4 2020.
• Mega-round funding fell 89.7% quarter on quarter, from $1.48 billion in Q3 to $153 million in Q4.
• Funding increased 46.5% quarter on quarter for early-stage L&H InsurTechs, from $145.84 million in Q3 to $213.64 million in Q4.
• Annual funding for InsurTech halved between 2021 and 2022, decreasing 49.5% year on year from $15.80 billion in 2021 to $7.98 billion in 2022.
• 2022 saw $6.51 billion less in mega-round funding than 2021 – a 66.7% year on year drop. -2022 was the first year to see an overall year on year drop in InsurTech investment since 2016.

Insurance Groundhogs Have Their Day: Some Primary Prices Need to Go Higher

Sure, it’s nice to know whether Spring is around the corner or more than a month away, but what about insurance market conditions?

How long will a hard market last in many lines? Are insurance prices high enough? Where will combined ratios land? Who’s in and who’s out of the property reinsurance market? Will cedents buy more limits or sit tight with what they have given the trajectory of reinsurance prices?

Executives of property/casualty commercial insurance and reinsurance companies made predictions to answer some those questions during earnings conference calls in January and early February. In addition, last week analysts from Standard & Poor’s predicted that the industry as a whole will report its first underwriting loss since 2017 in a report titled, “U.S. Property/Casualty Insurers Face Declining Investment Values And Personal Lines Loss Cost Inflation.”

Data privacy issues for 2023 - Which trends should companies be watching?

While the U.S. and other countries recognize every January 28th as Data Privacy Day in an international effort to spread awareness about online privacy, it’s a good reminder about the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data and enabling trust, according to the National Cybersecurity Alliance. In honor of this educational endeavor, below are five issues in the data privacy and cybersecurity space that businesses may see trending in 2023.

Chubb reports 2022 annual results

Chubb has reported its annual and Q4 results for 2022.

The insurer saw net income of $5.3 billion for the full year, down from $8.5 billion in 2021.

The insurer released its results on Tuesday, reporting consolidated net written premiums of $41.8 billion. Property and casualty (P&C) net premiums were up 7.7%, or 10.3% in constant dollars.

While net income was down, P&C underwriting income saw a “record” year, at $4.6 billion, the insurer said in a press release. So too did core operating income, at $6.5 billion, up 15.9%.

Its P&C combined ratio improve in 2022, at 87.6% compared to 89.1% in 2021.

Chubb saw its investment portfolio face an unrealized loss position of $7.3 billion, versus an unrealized gain position of $2.3 billion at December 2021.

VP of AXA's Climate School talks carbon neutral strategies

Antoine Poincaré is the Vice President of The Climate School, the e-learning arm of sustainable insurance company AXA Climate Now a year old, The Climate School is helping companies such as Unilever, Schneider Electric, Accor and Ubisoft up-skill their staff on the transition to a more sustainable future.

Climate Risk Isn't All About Climate: Population, Land Use, Incentives Need to Be Addressed

Whether the “atmospheric rivers” that recently inflicted weeks of damaging rains on California are “caused by climate change” or not (The Los Angeles Times says they likely aren’t) is largely beside the point.

The salient fact, from a risk-management perspective, is that a convergence of factors is contributing to more frequent, more costly severe-weather events – and governments, businesses, and communities need to work together to address these perils or their impacts will only worsen.

“Although the media and some officials were quick to link a series of powerful storms to climate change, researchers interviewed by The Times said they had yet to see evidence of that connection,” the paper reports. “Instead, the unexpected onslaught of rain and snow after three years of punishing drought appears akin to other major storms that have struck California every decade or more since experts began keeping records in the 1800s.”

Fair enough. But a few things have changed in California since the 1800s. Most notably: the population has gone from just over 1 million in 1800 to over 39 million. That population isn’t uniformly spread across the state’s nearly 164,000 square miles. Much of it is concentrated in cities and the suburbs and industrial areas that sprawl around them.

Tesla slashed its prices. We're now seeing the consequences : NPR

Last month, Tesla dropped its prices dramatically — up to 20%.

Auto companies offering discounts to promote sales is nothing new, but this move sparked a lot of reaction. So what was so special about these price cuts? And what do they mean?

A lot, actually. Here's how the announcement is having ripple effects, from the impact on Tesla owners to the changes it could spur across the auto industry.

Will customers buy BEVs fast enough for automakers to recoup their massive investments in electrics?

For automakers to make money on these vehicles, they need several years of production from assembly plants that are running at more than 90% of capacity. With the exception of Tesla, and probably Chinese automaker BYD, most OEMs won’t hit that point for years.

Now it’s no longer good enough to dazzle Wall Street analysts with sleek-looking BEV concepts or to announce you’ve locked up the supply chains needed to build them. Today, the investment community wants to know when OEMs will start making good margins on their battery-powered products that are coming down the assembly lines in mass production.

The race is on. A race to scale and profitability. And it won’t be easy. For one thing, there are so many EVs that will hit the market in the next three years that every segment will be sliced very thin. For another, a majority of car buyers feel they’re not ready to buy an electric car yet. Worse, in the U.S., largely because of their political beliefs, many of those people, maybe 40% of the market, want nothing to do with anything electric. They think climate change is a hoax, they think BEVs are stupid and they feel the government is trying to force them down their throats.

Steve Greenfield via Linked In

Top 10 telematic insurance providers in the US in 2023

[ED. NOTE]: http://thislist has been compiled to reflect the companies themselves, and does not rank them according to size, age or prominence.

Telematics technology is transforming the auto insurance industry - and has been adopted by many traditional providers.

The collection of data to create UBI insurance products is increasing in popularity. From commercial fleet services to consumer cover, protection that is based on the real-time streaming of data results in more accurate risk assessments, faster underwriting and lower-cost premiums. It also provides customers with tailored insurance solutions and incentivises greater road safety and vehicle maintenance. 

We’ve listed the top 10 insurance companies in the US that are currently providing and expanding their telematics offerings. The below list has been compiled to reflect the companies themselves, and does not rank them according to size, age or prominence.