By Ruby Motabhoy, innovation consultant, Plexal
Tractable, a startup that uses AI to help insurance companies process claims quickly, recently become the UK’s 100th unicorn. It’s another indicator that the UK’s insurtech space is heating up.
Three insurtech companies have been recognised as unicorns in the last three months (Tractable, Bought by Many and Zego).
Meanwhile, Corvus Insurance recently raised $100m. The startup uses AI to assess insurance risks and helps organisations protect themselves from the risks associated with cyber attacks.
As the insurance industry embraces innovation and new technology like AI, it’s being faced with questions around how they insure against cyber risks and how they untangle complex supply chains to understand who’s responsible for paying up.
Cyber insurance still tends to be bundled into other policies and most of the big insurance companies don’t offer stand-alone cyber policies.
At the same time, cyber is one of the biggest risks faced by businesses. As the recent Kaseya ransomware attack shows, businesses can face costly disruption in the wake of a cyber incident. And when it comes to ransomware specifically, around 50% of organisations are choosing to pay the ransom – which will only provide more fuel for bad actors.
Any innovation happening in the insurtech space needs to go hand in hand with cybersecurity so underwriters can get a more accurate understanding of the risk profile of an organisation. We expect these two worlds to become increasingly entwined.
