InsurTech/M&A/Finance💰/Collaboration
LexisNexis Risk Solutions to Acquire IDVerse in Fight Against AI-Generated Fraud
AI-powered automated document authentication and fraud detection solutions provider, IDVerse is set to be acquired by data and analytics platform, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and become a part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions Business Services to combat AI-generated fraud.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions already offers IDVerse‘s solutions pursuant to a pre-existing alliance agreement. However, the acquisition will integrate IDVerse’s capabilities across all solutions and will enhance customer readiness for future fraud threats through advanced AI-powered solutions.
Founded in Australia and launched commercially in 2018, IDVerse uses AI to combat fraud and deepfakes. Its proprietary technology is powered by a deep neural network which verifies the authenticity of identity documents and, with consumer consent, matches the consumer’s face to the photo on a document using biometric algorithms for identity verification and liveness detection to detect a fraudulent submission.
IDVerse’s technology is capable of verifying more than 16,000 types of identity documents globally across organisations in various industries and the public sector.
Brethren Mutual Insurance Company Implements One Inc’s ClaimsPay
Brethren mutual will deploy One Inc’s ClaimsPay to enhance its claims payment capabilities, as part of a commitment to provide policyholders a seamless digital experience.
One Inc (Folsom, Calif.), the leading digital payments platform provider for the insurance industry, today announced that Brethren Mutual Insurance Company (Hagerstown, MD.) has implemented One Inc’s ClaimsPay to enhance its digital claims payment capabilities. This enhancement enables a more efficient outbound claims disbursement process and offers new options for faster fund delivery to Brethren Mutual’s customers, according to a One Inc statement.
The vendor reports that the decision to employ ClaimsPay aligns with Brethren Mutual’s commitment to their policyholders by providing a seamless digital experience.
Players Health raises a $60 million Series C funding round
Athlete safety and insurance firm Players Health has raised a $60M Series C funding round led by Bluestone Equity Partners. Mosaic General Partners, RPM Ventures, SiriusPoint and TriplePoint Capital also participated in the round. The company has now raised more than $100M to date.
Players Health founder & CEO Tyrre Burks said he’s never been more bullish about the position of his company, which he launched in 2012.
“The market has dramatically changed; we’ve gone from well over 30 carriers that support youth and amateur sports from an insurance perspective, to now there’s less than five,” Burks said. “We see this as a massive opportunity for us to go and be the winner. With specialization of amateur sports and the need for data, insights and analytics around how they view risk, I think we see we have a right to win in the space.”
Nippon Life to acquire remaining shares in Resolution Life for $8.2bn - Reinsurance News
Nippon Life Insurance Company has agreed to consolidate its ownership interest in Resolution Life by acquiring the remaining shares from the firm’s investment limited partnership for $8.2 billion.
The transaction values Resolution Life at $10.6 billion, with shareholders also retaining final dividends before completion.
According to Resolution Life, this agreement marks the culmination of a partnership that began in 2019 when Nippon Life first invested in the company.
Nippon Life has since remained its largest investor, playing a key role in supporting its growth.
Following the acquisition completion, which is anticipated to be finalised in H2 2025, Resolution Life’s institutional business in the US, the UK, Bermuda and Singapore will become a subsidiary of Nippon Life, creating a new division that complements Nippon Life’s Japanese life business as well as its international asset management and retail businesses.
Opportunities in insurtech seen after two years of lower investment -
The insurance technology (insurtech) sector received less investment for two consecutive years, 2022 and 2023, according to the Insurtech Global Outlook 2024, prepared by the consulting firm NTT DATA. This scenario was due to an adjustment in investor expectations due to a challenging economic and political context, as well as changes in the variables of the insurance sector.
The study pointed out that this decline was somewhat expected, as the alignment with macroeconomic trends and capital markets showed that insurtech was not considered as a case with particular opportunities, compared to other sectors.
However, it was highlighted that the digital insurance industry is at a point of maturity. Carlos Manuel Ortega, director of insurance and health at NTT DATA Mexico, explained that 114 insurtechs were detected operating in the country, and 51 of them are growing.
"All of them are coexisting at the same time in the Mexican market, making investments and managing to continue growing, this is something very particular to the Mexican market and it is also present in Latin America and in the same way in markets such as Asia, Europe or the United States," said Ortega.
This growth in insurance technology was driven by the adoption of new technologies, such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), which boosted the segment's ability to combat emerging risks such as climate change, cybersecurity or mental health, evidencing the maturing of the sector, which seeks long-term sustainability and profitability.
Research
2024 US Auto Insurance Market Report — S&P Global Market Intelligence
The US auto insurance industry continues to emerge from four years of pandemic-induced volatility, but individual carriers’ approaches to an improving marketplace remain characterized by the sort of caution that historically poor underwriting results can induce.
S&P Global Market Intelligence projects that the private-passenger auto business is poised to return to profitability in 2024, just two years removed from its worst underwriting results in generations. The commercial auto business remains subject to unique dynamics, including challenging niches and prospects for outsized jury awards and legal settlements in specific jurisdictions, that likely makes its path to recovery less linear in nature. In both cases, we expect the pandemic-era volatility to have a lasting impact on market composition.
The private auto business has been consolidating for years both in terms of market share and the number of carriers writing meaningful amounts of premiums — and for good reason. The largest players in the space have increasingly differentiated themselves in a variety of ways, leveraging competitive advantages that vary from company to company but cumulatively serve to concentrate more business in a smaller array of carriers.
Generative AI in the insurance industry | IBM
Explore three critical factors for the insurance industry as it adopts generative AI, including better alignment with customer expectations.
Savvy insurers will seize the gen AI opportunities that intrigue their customers
2025 PREDICTIONS
Fitch: US P/C Insurers Hold at Neutral for 2025
U.S. property/casualty insurers are positioned favorably heading into 2025, Fitch Ratings forecasted in its annual outlook report.
Citing “a strong personal lines turnaround” and “resiliency following an above average hurricane season,” Fitch holds a neutral sector outlook for U.S. P/C insurers next year.
“P/C insurers are anticipated to generate a statutory underwriting profit and modestly higher net income in 2025,” said James Auden, managing director and property/casualty sector head for Fitch Ratings’ North American insurance rating group.
“Capital strength and prudent risk management practices for the broad universe of insurers are key factors promoting operating and rating stability amid ongoing challenges in managing wider spread natural catastrophe events and exposures and claims uncertainty in casualty lines.”
News
NC's ‘insurer of last resort’ tries a new idea to lower cost of claims on the coast
Inside the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety’s hail lab, lab technician Michelle McClain loads a 3-D-printed hailstone into a cannon. She’s running a simulation on a patch of IBHS-certified roof.
The goal is to create a roof that can guard against wind and water penetration. She fired the hail cannon, and the hailstone bounced off a shingle.
“With this particular impact, you can see that dent clearly,” said IBHS researcher Chris Sanders.
The cannon fired the hailstone over 60 miles per hour to replicate the kinetic impact of real hail.
“We’re just looking for … will water potentially penetrate through this?” Sanders said.
Climate change is a big driver of higher costs for insurance companies. When storms happen, they’re often bigger, wetter and windier. That trend is only going to continue in a warming world.
Last year, Nationwide dropped over 10,000 policies in eastern North Carolina due to the projected cost of insuring weather-related losses, according to a report from the Raleigh News and Observer. Even when companies stay, the cost of insurance continues to rise.
In 2020, the North Carolina Rate Bureau requested a 24.5% rate hike and got an average 7.9% increase. Now, there’s a 42% rate hike request on the table. The companies and Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey are in negotiations.
The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, a state-regulated nonprofit commonly referred to as the Beach Plan, has done something unusual to combat the rising cost of storm claims — for an insurance company, anyway. It started paying policyholders to upgrade their homes in the hopes of reducing future claims.
USAA must pay millions in long-running Hurricane Katrina suit
Hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $108 billion (unadjusted) in damage and was responsible for more than 1,800 fatalities.
Last week, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld a 2022 jury ruling ordering USAA to pay $10.5 million to the estate of a couple who lost their home in Hurricane Katrina.
The original lawsuit was filed by Paul and Sylvia Minor in 2008. It alleged USAA, which insured the Minors’ home at the time of the hurricane, failed to cover the loss of their $1 million home as well as other covered property nearby.
Hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $108 billion (unadjusted) in damage and was responsible for more than 1,800 fatalities across Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama in August 2005.
According to the NOAA, Katrina caused storm surge flooding of 25 to 28 feet above the normal tide level in areas along the coast of Mississippi. Along the southeastern Louisiana coast, storm surge flooding was 10 to 20 feet above normal tide levels. This caused extreme devastation in some coastal areas due to the combination of storm surge, wind and waves that left some areas with few structures still standing.
In the wake of Katrina, policyholders across different carriers challenged claims that were denied because insurers said damage from the hurricane’s storm surge was not covered under their homeowners policies. Standard homeowners insurance policies do not provide coverage for flooding-related losses, which means homeowners must seek out separate flood insurance.
Commentary/Opinion
Dynamic Pricing Gives Insurers a Competitive Edge | Insurance Thought Leadership
Leveraging advanced analytics, AI, IoT sensors and telematics, insurers can now dynamically adjust premiums based on market conditions and behavioral patterns.
Dynamic pricing in insurance represents a paradigm shift from traditional pricing strategies to real-time, data-driven risk assessment and pricing optimization. By leveraging advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things sensors and telematics, insurers can now dynamically adjust premiums based on market conditions and behavioral patterns.
This transformation enables personalized coverage and incentives for positive behavior and creates a virtuous cycle of risk reduction to deliver business value to policyholders and shareholders.
In 2023-24, as the insurance industry grappled with unprecedented climate-related catastrophes and geopolitical tensions, traditional actuarial pricing models faced challenges. When Hurricane Idalia struck Florida in August 2023, causing $3.6 billion in damages, insurers witnessed claim patterns that defied historical models.
It was the strongest hurricane to hit Florida's Big Bend region in more than 125 years. Similarly, the Red Sea shipping crisis in early 2024 triggered a cascade of marine and cargo insurance disruptions, with premium rates surging. The "Change Healthcare" attack in February 2024 is an example of third-party ransomware exposure, where an insured company is affected by an attack on one of its service providers.
Should CEOs Zip Their Lips About Controversial Issues?
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield made it a part of their namesake ice cream company’s mission to support social causes. Apple CEO Tim Cook has long made public his support of gay marriage and advocacy for the children of undocumented immigrants who were born in the US.
For the most part, though, few people cared about what a CEO thought about this or that issue, or what kinds of policies their company’s had.
But as the country has become more polarized, CEOs have found themselves pressured to take stands on social and public policy issues, many of them controversial hot buttons, and turn their companies in support of those positions. The environment, immigration, COVID-19, LGBTQ+ rights, and race, among others.
Michael Durney, assistant professor of accounting, wondered how this CEO activism affected investor reactions. How do investors factor in a CEO’s activism into their decision to buy or sell a stock? What about (in)activism?
Events
ClimateTech Connect April 15-16, 2025
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center / Washington, DC
ClimateTech Connect is the premier global conference and tradeshow for leaders advancing innovation in climate adaptation, resilience, and profitable sustainability through technology.
ClimateTech Connect brings together thought leaders, innovators, policymakers, and leading industry experts to explore the intersection of climate resilience strategies and technology. We are expecting 1500 attendees from the following industry sectors:
● Insurance and Financial Services
● Corporates
● Investors
● Government
● Start-ups and Scale-Ups
Join us for two days of inspiring keynotes, panel discussions, workshops, an electrifying expo hall + demo stage, and networking as we delve into the latest advancements and solutions in climate resilience. Together, we will shape a more sustainable future.
InsurTech Consulting and our 'Connected’ newsletter are proud media partners of ClimateTech Connect with a special 20% discount for our subscribers”. Use code:Connected20, register HERE