Lloyd’s selects 10 new Insurtech focussed on Covid-19 risks

London, 11th August 2020 –Lloyd’s of London, the world’s leading specialist insurance and reinsurance market, has selected 10 new Insurtechs to join Cohort 5 of the Lloyd’s Lab accelerator, including startups focussed on supporting the market’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Set to join the Lab on 7th September, Cohort 5 received more than 140 applications from across the world. Of these, 18 teams were invited to present their ideas at a virtual Pitch Day on 29th July and 10 were selected to join the Lab. Cohort 5 will be the second cohort to take part in a completely virtual programme. The new teams will be working alongside Praedicat, Metabiota and Dialogue, all of which took part in June’s Fast-tracked Covid-19 Sprint.

Cohort 5 is split into three key themes: data and models; new insurance products and markets; and response to Covid-19. The third theme is focussed specifically on: new types of insurance to support the Covid-19 response; helping the Lloyd’s market to assess Covid-19 risks; and helping Lloyd’s customers to adapt to a changing workplace.

Following June’s Fast-tracked Covid-19 Sprint, Lloyd’s Lab ran its first Fusion programme, a new three-day event designed to test early-stage startup ideas aimed at dealing with Covid-19 and other systemic risks. Three of the teams that took part in Fusion, Ryskex, Hivemind and Geollect, were later accepted to join Cohort 5.

In the first four cohorts, startups, entrepreneurs and businesses have presented ideas ranging from live-streaming drones to event-based parametric insurance solutions for catastrophic flooding and on-demand insurance for the gig economy. ClimaCell, Parsyl, Layr and Flock are just four of the Lab’s many successes.

Trevor Maynard, Head of Innovation at Lloyd’s, said:

“This cohort of InsurTechs will play an important role in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to help us develop the new models and insurance products of the future. We will undoubtedly need new products and services for insurers to deliver confidence and security against future waves of this pandemic and other systemic risks of the scale we have seen in 2020. I’m thrilled to have the best InsurTech’s across the globe join the Lloyd’s Lab and look forward to seeing the progress they make. Lloyd’s has thrived on its purpose of sharing risk and its as important now as it has ever been to combine minds and build a braver world.”

The 10 teams selected for Lloyd’s Lab Cohort 5 are:

• RYSKEX provides a blockchain-based ecosystem for Alternative Rysk Transfers and innovative insurance solutions. Their focus is on uninsurable risks in today’s insurance environment. (Berlin, Germany)
• Hivemind Technologies provides a software platform for managing human-in-the-loop data preparation. Its newest product, AGORA, is a tool for eliciting and aggregating expert judgements using a prediction market mechanism. (Oxford and London, United Kingdom)
• Geollect is an agile geospatial intelligence and analysis company, providing dynamic insights for decision support to a network of global clients in the defence, maritime insurance and cruise industries. (Bristol, United Kingdom)
• KnowRisk is a consortium of companies bringing the insurance and audit industries together for the first time. The platform builds a digital twin of site and supply chain risk by combining insurance, audit and internal company data. (London, United Kingdom)
• Predata is an AI company focused on uncovering predictive behaviours in online activity. The company has built a global comprehensive predictive analytics platform for geopolitical risk, enabling customers with global exposure to discover, quantify, and act upon dynamic shifts in online attention. (New York City, United States)
• Thimble the business insurance startup known for its monthly and on-demand policies, is developing a low-limit, first-line-of-defence, parametric contingent business interruption coverage to protect SMBs from COVID-19 and future pandemics. (New York City, United States)
• Blink Parametric is focused on parametric insurance innovation and transforming the complex products of its insurance and insurtech clients into simple, intuitive, real-time, online services via its customisable platform. (Cork, Ireland)
• HazardHub provides a comprehensive, detailed set of peril risk and property characteristics is a lightning-fast API. They deliver over 800 characteristics for any location in the US, allowing insurers to better understand the risk of a property before committing to an underwriting decision. (San Diego, United States)
• Hailios is an IoT and data analytics company that empowers the insurance industry with real-time, ground truth weather data. They have tight focus on severe convective storms and an ability to sense multiple characteristics of hailstorms. (Colorado Springs, United States)
• Inclusivity Solutions designs, builds, operates and innovates digital insurance solutions that enable financial inclusion and address the protection gap in emerging markets. They partner with mobile operators, banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions to deliver simple and affordable insurance cover through mobile phones. (Cape Town, South Africa)