HDI setting pace for shared economy insurance This article was produced in partnership with HDI Global SE, Australia Bennett Richardson of Insurance Business Australia asked Alex Tarantino, at HDI Global about how insurance fits into the fast-changing business of the sharing economy. First published in InsuranceBusinessMag.com/au on 09 August 2022
Peer to peer services Peer-to-peer services and the sharing economy seem to throw up a new disruptor firm every other week that promises to revolutionize the way we work, eat, travel, spend, communicate or (insert random verb here). The way the sharing economy works raises fundamental questions that many in the insurance world have not grappled with before. That might be true in some cases, but somebody forgot to tell HDI Global. Alex Tarantino, HDI regional underwriting manager for liability and cyber, says that in the sharing economy the customer journey has evolved from what used to be relationship with a product to a relationship with its use. This has big implications for insurance because the owner of the shared asset won’t think about taking out the appropriate insurance themselves. But HDI is working to cover the corporate liability of the new economy and technology entities, says Tarantino.
It’s a fast-growing area for HDI that has accelerated suddenly with over 80 submissions globally since the start of July 2021 to now. And not from minor players either. “These are big global sharing economy providers. At the same time, there are also some requests of start-ups who are looking for the right insurance partner who understands their needs and supporting them to grow together” says Tarantino. Growth in some areas such as micro-mobility is on a rip. Last year, shared e-scooter giant Lime raised $523m in funding. At the beginning of this year, the European micro-mobility platform Bolt raised €628m lifting the company's valuation to a total of €7.4bn. The number of e-scooters used in sharing services globally is expected to have increased nearly sixfold to 4.6 million in 2024 from 2019 levels, according to market research company Berg Insight.
“Appropriate insurance products are required to be at the right place and time by already being integrated and embedded into the platform customer service,” he says. The primary vehicle for doing this is third party insurance. “Then we've got the modular, covered options – so that’s liability for damage in the insurance, care, custody and control,” he says. “There's also things like cyber, there's data protection, and sometimes sort of bolt on products as well [for] crisis management or loss of turnover.”
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