Here’s a round-up of this month’s latest insurance industry-related M&As and partnerships.
Amazon offers business insurance
Amazon Business partnered with insurtech Next Insurance to offer eligible members small business insurance products including General Liability, Professional Liability, Workers’ Compensation, Commercial Auto and Tools and Equipment. Next Insurance recently acquired AP Intego this month as well, which offers property and casualty insurance products, including pay-as-you-go workers’ compensation.
Amazon also recently expanded Amazon Care, a virtual and in-home health care services platform, to employers in Washington and plans to offer the program to all 50 states later this year. The company saw huge consumer demand for telemedicine earlier in the pandemic.
AmFam launches MilesMyWay
American Family partnered with Cambridge Mobile Telematics to create MilesMyWay, a new auto insurance program that rewards drivers for driving less. This program differs from other pay-as-you-go auto insurance programs by being an earned savings program, giving customers the maximum amount they will pay each month with rewards adjusting based on mileage. This program is available to customers who drive less than the average of 10,000 miles annually.
Amwins Group acquires Worldwide facilities
Amwins is the largest wholesale insurance broker and is getting larger by acquiring Worldwide Facilities, the fourth-largest wholesale insurance brokers in the U.S. This deal broadens Amwins’ specialty capabilities on the west coast and is the broker’s 50th acquisition. This acquisition is expected to close in April 2021.
Chubb submits an offer to buy The Hartford, gets rejected
Chubb proposed the acquisition of Hartford Financial Services Group for $23 billion, as a way to help Chubb expand further into auto and home insurance sectors. The Hartford, the second-biggest provider of workers’ compensation insurance in the U.S., rejected the offer stating that the offer was too low. The deal would have been one of Chubb’s largest since 2016. Read more about this move here.
Chubb also recently launched Blink, a digital suite of consumer insurance products designed to provide flexible, customizable coverage options via modular insurance policies that are written in plain english.
Cincinnati Insurance Company partners with Zesty.ai
Zesty.ai, a climate risk analytics company, agreed to fully integrate Z-FIRE across the Cincinnati Insuranceportfolio, giving agents the ability to assess wildfire risk using an AI model trained on more than 1,200 wildfire incidents. Z-FIRE considers building materials, topography, historical weather data, and factors extracted from high-resolution imagery like vegetation clearance to determine a more predictive risk score for customers. This partnership will provide homeowners with policies that accurately reflect a property’s wildfire risk.
Cruise LLC acquires Voyage
GM’s self-driving technology company Cruise LLC acquired retirement community-focused autonomous-vehicle startup Voyage. From this acquisition, Cruise will now have more than 60 people trained in developing and running self-driving vehicles, and will be working on the self-driving shuttle project Cruise Origin.
Doma goes public via SPAC
Previously known as States Title, Doma announced plans to go public through a merger with SPAC Capitol Investment Corp. V for $3 billion. Doma developed patent machine learning technology that reduces title processing time as well as the entire mortgage closing process to less than a week and has facilitated over 800,000 real estate closings.
Farmers launches CrashAssist
Farmers Insurance launched the crash-detection feature CrashAssist, designed to deliver push notifications in response to policyholders’ car accidents. Customers are prompted to confirm, and if there is no response within one minute, phone calls to emergency services are triggered.
Google Cloud launches cyber insurance
Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty and Munich RE have partnered up to create Google Cloud cyber insurance “Cloud Protection +,” which offers a new type of protection against internal corporate cyber incidents and incidents related to Google Cloud. The enhanced data collected from the Risk Manager determines a customer’s unique risk position and provides a more efficient and transparent underwriting process. This is the first-of-its-kind collaborationbetween a major cloud provider and leading cyber insurance companies.
Hippo goes public after SPAC merger
Hippo announced a merger with Reinvent Technology partners to go public for $5 billion with the intent to expand its product to 95% of the U.S. population by the end of 2021. The home insurance-focused company also sealed two claims technology partnerships with Claimatic and Five Sigma. Claimatic provides software that automates claims distribution, and Five Sigma offers a claims management platform for insurers.
Lloyd’s publishes its first version of Core Data Record, announces collaboration with ACORD
Lloyd’s has been actively seeking ways to improve its service to policyholders, and recently introduced the first version of its Core Data Record with the intent to shift the market even further into the world of digital technology. This program enables standardized quality data to flow through the Lloyd’s market and reduce costs and effort of doing business.
Lloyd’s is collaborating with ACORD, a data exchange facilitator, to improve adoption of the global standards already being utilized in the London insurance market.
Nationwide partners with Vertafore, phases out Spire
Vertafore announced that Nationwide joined its Commercial Submissions platform to drive innovation in market connectivity, allowing Nationwide agency partners to generate and compare commercial lines quotes easier and quicker by pre-filling 80% of application fields from the agency’s management system and allowing agents to invite clients to review quotes in real-time. Nationwide plans to start integrating commercial lines products into the platform starting in May.
Nationwide is also evaluating other options for Spire to phase it out of its product line. The carrier originally developed Spire in 2019 as a mobile-first digital auto insurance platform meant for millennials, and originally had plans to expand offerings to renters insurance and homeowners insurance. The company continues to modernize and take on other business ventures like its partnership with Walmart and new offering Anew.
The Porch Group acquires Homeowners of America
Under this merger agreement, Porch will acquire HOA and all related subsidiaries and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021, allowing the software platform focused on home services companies to attract lifetime value potential customers through a comprehensive insurance offering. HOA is licensed in 31 states and operates in six states: Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.
Volvo Financial Services partners up with REIN
The financial arm of Volvo Group partnered with REIN, an insurtech MGA, and is creating a new integrated insurance program for Volvo Truck customers. This new program was created to alleviate operating expenses for vehicle purchasers by having a data-driven approach to streamlining purchasing, risk assessment and risk mitigation. It is in its final phases of piloting and is expected to roll out later in 2021.