DLT: CRYPTO INSURANCE
Risk on the radar Florian Graillot, insurtech influencer, investor and Founder of specialist venture capital fund AstoryaVC believes the sector is a long way from reaching its full potential It’s said that if a startup isn’t listed on the Astorya database of European insurtechs, it probably doesn't exist. Florian Graillot, founding partner of the early-stage insurtech-focussed fund AstoryaVC will take that! Launched in October 2017, Astorya's remit, including its Astorya.io automated scouting tool, has been to monitor the local startup industry and help spot emerging trends in that space. Describing itself as the largest search engine for insurance and banking technologies in Europe, Astorya.io has identified more than 3,400 start-ups to date and publishes data including technology description, fundraising, team and founders’ information, business www.fintech.finance
partnerships and whether a startup is active or dead. It looks for embedded and open insurance businesses, those operating alongside the insurance value chain and, importantly, those taking a punt at new risks. Astorya.io throws a spotlight on an under-sung member of the fintech family, which, Graillot believes, is a long way off reaching its full potential. Out of a total of just over €12billion in VC backing for European fintech startups during 2020 (according to Crunchbase), Astorya’s monitoring shows just over €600million was targeted at insurtechs – and a big chunk of that (€90million) went to one company, the UK’s Bought By Many. Yet the potential to transform a sector that has lagged banking in the transformation race by some degree is huge. The apparent lack of investor activity is a source of disappointment for Graillot.
“In Europe, the insurance market is worth around $1,300billion of premium – having even one per cent of that, you’re already a huge company,” he says. “So, it should be a more attractive market.” One reason it isn’t, he thinks, is that there’s no obvious insurance cluster on which to focus attention. There is no equivalent for insurtech of the London fintech ecosystem, for instance. Rather, there are several ‘hubs’ each only comprising a handful of operators who share a city or country purely by accident of birth. “Take Germany. There is Munich, with Allianz and Munich Re, and Cologne, with Köln and mutual Tier 2 players. In France, it’s the same; you have a few big players in Paris; most of the mutuals are in Lyon. So there is no one hub with all the players that could maybe drive innovation in that space,” says Graillot. Neither has there been the hunger to create one – at least, not by the major institutions, who, until now, have not felt the same imperative as banks to find new revenue streams. Issue 6 | TheInsurtechMagazine
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