Asia InsurTech Podcast

The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Arsh Maini, the Chief Executive Officer of Candela Labs about the wave of Digital Transformation in the Insurance Industry and the fact that it is definitively here to stay. We discussed how data helps drive micro-targeted and personalized products and the impact that the move to cloud computing will have on the industry and Candela Labs. finally, we discussed...

Another awesome month for InsurTech in Asia! Congratulations to PasarPolis for raising US$5M from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), which focuses on accelerating financial inclusion and literacy in developing countries. It is IFC’s first investment in an Indonesian startup and demonstrates the belief that InsurTechs like PasarPolis can help increase insurance penetration in...

The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Yannick Even, Global Analytics Business Partner at Swiss Re, about the use of data in (re)insurance. Data has the power to transform insurance as we know it and enable insurers to offer better, more personalized products and help close the protection gap. Yannick shares how data allows insurers to cover new risks, such as type II diabetes patients.   Find the...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Kulin Shah and Yogesh Agrawal, the co-founders of Onsurity. The startup  just celebrated its one year anniversary. Onsurity has the vision to bring affordable healthcare to SMBs and to increase insurance penetration in India.  Transcript: Michael   Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused o...

It is only the first month of the New Year and we already have Asia’s first InsurTech unicorn of 2021. Certainly a promising start! Indian InsurTech and licensed general insurer Digit achieved a valuation of US$1.9 billion. The company was only founded in 2017 by industry veteran Kamesh Goyal, who previously worked for insurance incumbent Allianz and to whom we spoke in our latest episode.  In Jap...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Kamesh Goyal, the founder and the Chairman of Digit Insurance which has reached unicorn status in January 2021 with a valuation of USD 1.9 billion. Kamesh has been working in insurance for almost 33 years. Before starting Digit, he worked with Allianz for almost 16 years in Asia, the Middle East, and Allianz’s Head Office in Munich, Germany. Kamesh talks about the l...

For our 100th episode, Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Winnie Wong, the CEO and Executive Director of Avo Insurance and Asia Insurance , and Walter De Oude, the deputy chairman of Aviva SingLife , about InsurTech in Asia. How has the industry developed over the past 2 years? What is next in InsurTech in Asia? There is probably no one better to discuss the state and future of InsurTech, than the...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Samdarshi Sumit, the President Director, and CEO at PFI Mega Life in Indonesia. Samdarshi shares how life insurance has changed due to the global outbreak of Covid-19 and how digital transformation has accelerated. When it comes to transformation in general, some of the biggest challenges are changing behavior, mindset, and culture.   The pandemic has forced agent...

Happy New Year! Asia InsurTech Podcast is back with more exciting news kicking off 2021! Grab Financial Group (GFG) starts the year with a bang, securing over US$300 million in their series A funding round. According to Grab , GFG  increased its total revenue by over 40% in 2020 vs 2019. Its insurance distribution reached over 4.5 million monthly active users and distributed over 70 million insura...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Nicolo Robba, the Co-founder and COO of Indonesian InsurTech Lifepal. Nicolo first came to Southeast Asia with Lifepal co-founder Giacomo Ficari when both of them were working for startup studio and venture builder Rocket Internet and helped build e-commerce giant Lazada . Seeing the massive opportunities for insurance in Indonesia with low insurance penetration r...

Asia InsurTech Podcast talked to Mahesh Subramanian, Co-founder & CEO of AI startup CamCom. The company is focused on deploying AI in the automotive space and to innovate along the insurance value chain. For example, with the help of drones and computer vision, CamCom could assess damages on a car within minutes after an accident.  Mahesh talks about how human-dependent the insurance industry is,...

For the last  News Roundup of 2020, Theresa Blissing, Michael Waitze, and Shefali Sonpar reflected on what 2020 meant for InsurTech and digital transformation and what 2021 might look like. 2020 was the year that insurers all over the world were forced to accelerate digital transformation and embrace digital distribution. InsurTechs have played a crucial role on many levels. InsurTechs like Unchar...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Deepak Bhuvneshwari Uniyal, Co-founder and CEO of Insurance Samadhan, a tech platform resolving insurance complaints and claims in life, health, and general insurance. Deepak has started as an insurance sales agent and experienced first hand why insurance is so important for people to manage risks.  Insurance being a very technical product that is not tangible, pe...

Asia InsurTech Podcast talked to Michael Gerber, the CEO of 360F. Originally from Switzerland, Michael has worked as a consultant in over 100 projects in more than 20 years and understands the pain points the insurance industry is facing. He shares why he chose to work in insurance and why the industry has often a bad reputation. Michael talks about the importance of protection and investment prod...

December started with some major FinTech news. Grab-Singtel received the digital full-bank licenses issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Only two digital full-bank licenses and two digital wholesale were awarded to four of the 21 applicants. The AIP Team is wondering if a (re)insurance license will follow next! Other major news is the partnership between AIA and ZA Tech . AIA Group...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with John Brisco, CEO & Co-Founder of Coherent. Originally from Scotland, John has worked for insurance incumbents AXA, QBE, and Manulife in Europe, Australia, and Asia. With his rich experience in the industry, he started Coherent to help insurers get new, innovative products out to market faster, tackling the challenges around legacy systems.  Coherent allows insurer...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Mark Wales, co-founder of Galileo Platforms, a B2B platform technology company. Mark has over 30 years of experience in financial service IT and spent the past 16 years in Hong Kong and Singapore. After working for major international corporations including ING , he co-founded Galileo in 2016. Galileo’s blockchain powered platform connects participants in the insu...

November ends with more news from Singlife . The newly formed holding company Aviva Singlife issues S$550m subordinated notes to be listed on the Singapore Exchange. The money collected will be used for funding the purchase of Aviva Singapore operations and the capital requirements.  In India, InsurTech startup Turtlemint raises $30 million. Turtlemint works with insurance sales agents / brokers a...

Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Harprem Doowa, the CEO and Co-Founder of Frank.co.th. Before starting Frank.co.th, Harprem was working in the e-commerce space and co-founded e-commerce company WhatsNew and Moxy. The lessons he learned about selling products online helped Harprem to start the successful online distribution platform Frank.co.th which was fully acquired in 2019. The reason Harprem...

The Asia InsurTech Podcast talked to Andy Ann, co-founder of YAS Digital. Andy is a serial entrepreneur who has won numerous awards and brings a wealth of big data, digital media and entrepreneurship expertise. He is the founder and Chairman of NDN Group , a digital conglomerate focusing on data, mobile and media technologies and founded Klarity Analytics , Hot Mob , and Darizi.com.  In the past d...

The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Ruth Haller, the CEO and co-Founder of Anapi, an insurtech platform that helps startups and entrepreneurs get key insurance coverage to cover new and emerging risks. Ruth is a very experienced insurance executive who started her career with incumbent Zurich Insurance. Ruth and the team at Anapi are focused on small business and startups, helping them manage pote...

November started with some exciting blockchain news. Singlife Philippines adopts Galileo’s blockchain solution as their insurance core policy administration system. After years of proof-of-concept projects, this is Galileo’s first implementation and possibly the first time ever a blockchain platform is used by an insurer as a core system. Blockchain platforms promise to lower admin costs substanti...

The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Victor Roy, the Founder of Bindcover.  Victor has almost two decades of experience in the insurance industry.  He has worked in brokerage firms, did some marketing and also opened his own agency, which is still active.  Running his own agency at the beginning was difficult because all of the processes were manual.  Even back then, Victor wanted to build an onlin...

We talked to Melissa Wong, the Group Chief Digital Officer at bolttech. Like insurer FWD, bolttech is part of Pacific Century Group (PCG) and the group’s latest international InsurTech business. It was launched in Asia in 2020 and is integrating three capabilities including device protection, insurtech exchange, and digital insurance.   Melissa comes from a digital banking and FinTech background a...

October ends with the theme of conglomerates entering insurance. Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent is applying for a re-insurance license which seems to be part of their overall strategy all along. In 2017, Tencent has already launched its insurance platform WeSure and has invested in a number of InsurTechs including Zhong An , Waterdrop , Policy Bazaar and Blue .  Another conglomerate making wave...