A generation of companies promising to transform insurance through technology, whose model has shifted from disruption toward infrastructure.
Insurtech designates the movement of companies, which emerged in the mid-2010s, that claimed to disrupt insurance as fintech had shaken up banking, through smooth interfaces, algorithms and direct-to-consumer sales. Experience has shown the limits of the analogy, for insurance is not only a distribution activity, it is above all the bearing of a risk backed by capital and mutualisation, which software alone does not dissolve. The pioneers such as Lemonade or Root long displayed loss-making combined ratios, revealing that they acquired customers without mastering underwriting. After the 2022 correction, the sector's centre of gravity shifted from conquest toward infrastructure, supplying tools to established insurers and adopting the underwriting-agency model rather than balance-sheet bearing.
Rather than replacing insurers, surviving insurtechs now sell them claims-automation building blocks or operate as underwriting agencies, leaving the bearing of capital to a reinsurer.
assurtech, insurance technology