SBC InsurTech announces a new collaboration with leading global professional services firm, Aon.

Aon joins the SBC community as an industry partner for SBC InsurTech CoLab (CoLab), a themed-based innovation program for mature markets. CoLab aims to align the impact innovation can deliver with an organisation’s strategic imperatives and top priorities. Aon will be focusing on CoLab’s ‘Commercial and Specialty Lines’ sector, which will look at specific problems in key customer segments ranging from SME to large industrial insurance. This will enable the key gaps in the insurance value chain to be better understood and addressed through collaborating with growth stage startups. Themes that will be explored within the CoLab include:

  • Cycle I (Dec 2018 – Mar 2019): Industrial IoT and how it enables the better understanding of risk
  • Cycle II (April – July 2019): Enabling People Safety & Wellbeing on high risk work sites
  • Cycle III (September – December 2019): Tracking and estimating the value of cargo within the Marine/Logistics sector or the future of SME Engagement & Distribution

By teaming up with SBC InsurTech, Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions business is reigniting the debate on tackling the challenge of providing cover for uninsured risks, notably intangible assets. Through the selection and sourcing of growth stage businesses, Aon’s goal is to specifically address the challenges its re/insurer clients face, that have not developed a startup ecosystem on their own.

“SBC InsurTech is committed to delivering targeted innovation programs that address real business challenges faced by the insurance industry, within blurred ecosystem boundaries that fast-moving technology creates,” says Sabine VanderLinden, CEO at SBC InsurTech.

The CoLab program is split into sub-sectors, one of which is Commercial and Specialty Lines, to best utilise the business context of those industry players that want to drive unique and fast market advantage. Our first CoLab delivered a conversion rate of 100 percent from matching well defined problems to a customised solution. Our co-creation process aligns the very best growth stage ventures to those gaps our corporate partners wish to address.

Tshidi Hagan, Program Director at SBC CoLab InsurTech comments: “We certainly recognise the significant role a global professional services firm has to play in the sub-sector of Commercial and Specialty Lines, and we’re excited to have Aon onboard.”

The SBC team will work with the Aon team to establish the particular problems that Aon and its clients want to see solved. Our sourcing engine will then start when we really get to the five whys of the problem. What follows is CoLab’s structured and facilitated co-creation approach that optimises access to the right expertise, fosters highly effective partnerships and quickly results in commercial engagement.

“Aon is committed to helping clients navigate the InsurTech ecosystem and adopt new technologies that advance strategic initiatives. Working with CoLab means we can match startups with new product development to deliver growth opportunities. This will ultimately provide customers with broader insurance protection and risk management while enabling insurers to stay ahead of the game with a competitive advantage,” says Kelly Superczynski, Head of EMEA Analytics for Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions business at Aon.

SBC InsurTech CoLab engages multiple industry players for each CoLab sub-sector. For Commercial and Specialty Lines, Zurich Insurance, one of the world’s leading insurers, is also part of the program.

Commenting on the program, Antony Elliott, Group Head of Business Transformation at Zurich Insurance Group says: “We see the SBC CoLab approach as an accelerated and agile way agile way for us to work with InsurTech startups to solve customer and industry problems.”

The Commercial and Specialty Lines engagement period will take place in February where the industry partners and selected startups explore possible use-cases to address the problem statements identified which once vetted are progressed to a commercial pilot.