Driving innovation through state-of-the-art technologies and solutions, it is the sheer inventiveness of these scaling companies that is driving new trends throughout the industry.
According to recent market reports, by December 2022 there were 44 insurtech unicorns globally. The US United leads the way with 25, followed by nine in Asia, eight in Europe, and one each in Australia and Latin America. These scaling companies range from brokerages, to data and claims processing experts using AI-powered underwriting and more. The insurtech space has never looked so dynamic.
12. Oscar Health
Sector: Health insurance
CEO: Mario Schlosser
Founded: 2012
Headquartered: New York
Oscar is an insurtech firm that utilises technology, data, and design to provide health insurance products to individuals, families, and small businesses. The company’s customer-centric approach aims to redesign the health insurance experience, with a focus on proactive models that optimize the patient-doctor relationship and provide suitable health plans.
As of 2021, Oscar has about 529,000 members across 18 states, making it the third-largest for-profit national insurer, according to Sønr Global’s 2021 insurtech report.
In 2020, Oscar launched its virtual primary care service, which allows members to access healthcare remotely. The company also introduced its tech-driven platform +Oscar a year later, which offers medical cost management to clients. By utilizing data and technology, Oscar seeks to improve the quality of healthcare while making it more accessible and affordable.
11. Coalition
Sector: Cyber insurance
CEO: Joshua Motta
Founded: 2017
Headquartered: San Francisco
Established in 2017, Coalition offers a unique combination of extensive insurance coverage and proactive cybersecurity tools, as well as access to digital forensics and incident response services. This enables organisations to effectively recognize, alleviate, and insure against all kinds of digital threats. As an insurtech unicorn with over 500 employees, Coalition caters to more than 160,000 customers worldwide.
Operating under licenses that allow it to function in all 50 US states, the San Francisco-based company provides insurance policies through its own admitted insurance carrier. These policies protect against cyber risk, technology errors and omissions, and other executive risks.
In the year 2022, Coalition had a noteworthy achievement when it reached a valuation of $5 billion in July after securing $250 million in investment. Following this, in September, the firm acquired P&C insurer Digital Affect from Munich Re, solidifying its position in the market.
10. Next Insurance
Sector: SMB insurance
CEO: Guy Goldstein
Founded: 2016
Headquartered: Palo Alto
Next Insurance, a California-based insurtech unicorn, provides policies for a range of industries, such as beauty, cleaning, construction, entertainment, and fitness. Its coverage areas include commercial, general and professional liability, errors and omissions, workers’ compensation, and auto insurance.
Through Business Prime, Next Insurance has partnered with retail giant Amazon to offer small businesses an online platform to access various insurance products.
The insurtech has raised a total of $881 million through six funding rounds, with its latest being a Series E financing in April 2021, which raised its current market value to $4 billion. The company made its first acquisition in the previous year, acquiring Juniper Labs to launch Next Labs, which utilises Juniper’s open data and machine learning-powered underwriting tools to provide more scalable products.
Next Insurance also acquired digital insurance agency AP Intego in October 2021, allowing it to introduce Next Connect, an embedded insurance product for small and medium-sized businesses.
9. Ethos
Sector: Life insurance
CEO: Peter Colis
Founded: 2016
Headquartered: San Francisco
California-based Ethos provides ethical life insurance. The unicorn raised $200mn in a Series D round in May 2021 before following up with a $100mn extension later that summer, bringing the insurtech’s’ most recent valuation to $2.7 billion. Investors in Ethos was launched in 2016 with the goal of making life insurance more accessible and affordable and is licensed in all 50 US states.
The company’s online application process takes just a few minutes, and most customers can get approved for coverage without a medical examination.
Ethos offers term life insurance policies with coverage amounts ranging from $50,000 to $10 million, and policy terms of 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. The premiums for Ethos policies are fixed for the entire term of the policy, and the policies are renewable at the end of the term.
A differentiator for Ethos is its use of data and technology to simplify the underwriting process and offer lower rates to customers who are in good health. This means that many customers can get coverage without having to pay higher premiums due to pre-existing health conditions or other risk factors.
8. Cedar
Sector: Health insurance
CEO: Florian Otto
Founded: 2016
Headquartered: New York
Cedar is a healthcare fintech start-up that uses advanced data science to simplify and personalise the medical payment experience for patients. The company offers a “consumer-friendly” approach to bill planning and payments.
According to a recent statement released by Cedar, the insurtech is currently “engaging with 22 million patients on an annualised basis, representing a 120% increase since the beginning of 2021.”
Speaking about the recent growth of Cedar, CEO and Co-Founder Florian Otto said, “We are seeing that traditional approaches to the patient financial experience are no longer driving positive outcomes for healthcare providers, payers or consumers. Over the past year, we’ve worked with our client partners to improve important metrics around financial results, patient satisfaction and digital engagement, leveraging our expanded Cedar Suite to simplify and optimise consumer experiences along the end-to-end healthcare journey.”
7. Newfront
Sector: Commercial insurance brokerage
CEO: Spike Lipkin
Founded: 2017
Headquartered: San Francisco
Newfront is an insurtech brokerage firm that provides users with a digital platform to simplify traditionally complex and time-consuming insurance purchasing processes. This includes completing applications, accessing policies, making payments, requesting certificates, and tracking claims status. The company offers customised risk management plans and commercial risk products that cater to various industries.
In October 2020, Newfront secured $68 million in Series C funding.
The additional funding helped the firm expand its operations and further develop its digital platform.
In July 2021, Newfront announced a merger with ABD Insurance, a move that would allow the combined entity to place over $2 billion in premiums annually. This merger positions the company as a major player in the insurance market, offering a comprehensive range of insurance products and services to businesses.
6. Collective Health
Sector: Health
CEO: Ali Diab
Founded: 2013
Headquartered: San Mateo
Collective Health provides a cloud-based platform for self-insured employers to manage different healthcare plans. The platform includes tools for claims and payment processing, member advocates who can help workers find care, and dashboards that provide insights into an employer’s program performance.
Collective health has experienced rapid membership growth, adding almost 250,000 members in just three sales cycles. Some of its notable clients include eBay, Palantir, Pinterest, and Uber. In May 2021, Collective Health secured $280 million in Series F funding, which brought its valuation up to $1.5 billion.
5. At-Bay
Sector: Cyber insurance
CEO: Rotem Iram
Founded: 2016
Headquartered: San Francisco
At-Bay offers a cyber insurance and risk management platform for businesses, allowing them to access policies and security insights tailored to their IT systems and vulnerabilities. The company provides coverage for a range of areas, including network security, information privacy, business interruption, financial fraud, cyber extortion, and media content.
In October 2021, At-Bay announced the closing of a $20 million extension to their Series D financing, bringing the total raised in the round to $205 million, and placing the start-up’s value at $1.35 billion.
4. Hippo
Sector: P&C
CEO: Richard McCathron
Founded: 2015
Headquartered: Palo Alto
Hippo Insurance provides home insurance policies using advanced technology to deliver a simpler and smarter coverage approach. The provider has become a household name in the US through its innovative proactive approach to risk. By using IoT sensors and smart home technology, Hippo is able to lower premiums for customers.
The insurtech’s personalised digital policies cover household items not typically included in standard home insurance and offer smart home devices to help customers identify and prevent small issues. In addition to its expansion into commercial property, the company has acquired home maintenance start-up Sheltr, property and casualty insurer Spinnaker, and First Connect Insurance Services to enhance its services.
3. Clearcover
Sector: Auto
Founded: 2016
Headquartered: Chicago
Clearcover provides a mobile app-based platform for drivers to manage their auto insurance policies. The platform includes a Coverage Wizard feature to help users find and compare policies, while claims are handled digitally through the Clear Claims feature.
Customers can add details and evidence of damage via the Clearcover mobile app, which enables fast assessment and decision-making.
Clearcover has a strong reputation when it comes to company culture. In 2023, it was hailed one of the ‘Best Places to Work’ by Insurance Business America.
In November 2022, Clearcover also ranked 50 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in the US.
2. AgentSync
Sector: Compliance software
CEO: Niji Sabharwal
Founded: 2018
Headquartered: Denver
Launched by husband and wife co-founders Niji Sabharwal (CEO) and Jenn Knight (CTO) AgentSync powers rapid growth for insurance carriers, agencies, and MGAs by offering modern tools for producer management.
The insurtech’s customer-centric design, seamless APIs, and automation reduce friction, increase efficiency, and maintain compliance, ultimately helping to improve the broker onboarding, contracting,licensing, and compliance processes.
AgentSynch has also been recognised as one of Denver’s Best Places to Work, as a Forbes Magazine Cloud 100 Rising Star, an Insurtech Insights Future 50 winner, and is ranked 88 in Forbes America’s 500 Best Startup Employers 2022.
1. Lemonade
Sector: P&C, Auto
CEO: Daniel Schreiber
Founded: 2015
Headquartered: New York
Lemonade leverages AI and behavioral economics to provide homeowners, renters, pet health, term life insurance and recently Lemonade Car auto products. The company’s app handles the entire process of providing quotes, underwriting, selling policies, and processing claims.
Lemonade has an excellent company service rating from its customers and has had much success through the use of chatbots to process policy queries and claims, as well as detect fraud, which resulted in a three-second claim approval in one instance.
The insurtech is also known for its community-minded culture. The Certified B Corporation operates a yearly give-back programme where it donates unused premiums to non-profit organisations selected by its community.
