London has fallen behind in insurtech as Munich takes the lead

Munich has overtaken London as the European leader of insurtech, but there’s still hope for London to take back its crown.

According to Janthana Kaenprakhamroy of insurtech start-up Tapoly, London fell from its perch because of Brexit.

Kaenprakhamroy is one of more than 20 start-up founders discussing how insurers can engage with consumers at the annual Intelligent InsurTECH conference on October 3 in London. Click here to find out more.

Since the UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, a number of European communities saw an opportunity to build their own insurtech hubs.

Munich makes sense as a hub—it’s home to major insurers, is supported by the local government, and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology appointed Munich as a digital hub for insurtech, Kaenprakhamroy said.

It’s not all bad news for London though, explained Kaenprakhamroy, adding that the UK government is already building a stronger ecosystem for start-ups.

“The UK needs to attract investment, which it’s trying to do, but there’s more that can be done. This includes looking at tax rates and incentive schemes for foreign investors to invest in UK start-ups,” she said.

Kaenprakhamroy founded Tapoly in 2016, when she left her job and found herself having to buy all sorts of insurance for her freelance career.

“The majority of the sharing economy finds traditional insurance either too expensive or too cumbersome,” said Kaenprakhamroy.

With 40 percent of the world’s 3.4 billion workforce expected to become freelancers by 2020, insurers are missing out on an “underserved and untapped” market.

Insurtech really began four years ago, explained the start-up founder, around the same time as insurers started to focus on technology.

Kaenprakhamroy explained that nowadays, insurers have the technology but they don’t have distribution, and that’s where Tapoly comes in.

The start-up focuses solely on the sharing economy, providing on-demand insurance to freelancers, sole traders and contractors, among others.

For insurers, Tapoly offers a market share in an area where people generally don’t buy insurance.

But, for Kaenprakhamroy, the target audience is the consumer, and there’s three criteria she looked at when building the platform: cost, time and convenience.

“The platform has to be quick (taking no more than two minutes the first time, and mere seconds the second time), and provide a tailor-made profile for our customers,” she said.

Unlike traditional insurance, where customers are placed into risk groups, Tapoly makes calculations specifically on the consumer, so that it can offer a better rate, based on the customer’s personal profile.

Tapoly is one of more than 20 insurtech startups attending Intelligent Insurer’s Intelligent InsurTECH conference on October 3 in London. Click  here to find out more.

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