PE firm creates €10m insurtech fund for Europe investments

Private equity firm Odysseus Alternative Ventures (OAV) has partnered with the APICIL Group, a French social protection provider, to create Insurtech Capital I. with a commitment of €10m.

The fund will invest in a variety of French and European start-ups that are seeking to develop new technologies, new business models and new forms of delivery for the insurance sector.

The fund is targeting investments in innovative companies within the insurance sector which are early stage startups (Seed and Serie A), leveraging OAV’s proprietary semi- automated sourcing platform to identify and filter promising candidates for investment.

To date, OAV has several thousand companies in its database, the majority of which are developing responses to specific issues which are emerging as the industry seeks to digitalise its activities and identify future areas of growth, according to a corporate statement.

The ambition of the Insurtech Capital Fund is eventually to scale with other European insurance companies in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK, seeking similar exposure to this fast-growing subset of the insurance industry.

For APICIL, the benefits are two-fold: as well as acquiring investment exposure to a fast-growing subset of the industry, the fund will offer access to sources of innovation which will drive future growth and profitability for the group as a whole, according to the statement.

A key feature of the OAV concept is its ability to structure investment vehicles which provide meaningful access to this fast-emerging asset class alongside exposure to related alternative assets.

”We strongly believe that our unique investing approach is an attractive way to allow investors meaningful access to the superior returns that are available to those who can successfully identify the future disruptors across a range of financial and technology related businesses,” said Minh Tran, CEO of OAV.

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