The 12th Lloyd’s Lab Cohort is seeking individuals and businesses with ambitious ideas aimed at resolving insurance challenges and propelling the industry forward. The programme aims to encourage the development of businesses that are pioneering solutions, products, and technologies to enhance environmental resilience and promote sustainable business practices.
Participants in the Lloyd’s Lab initiative engage in a 10-week fast-track programme designed to expedite innovation, and provides a platform for testing new concepts, ideas, and products with the guidance and support of experts from the world’s largest insurance and reinsurance market.
Speaking to Insurance Business America, Lloyd’s Canada president Marc Lipman, said: “The idea was to really canvass the marketplace to help us explore customer centric solutions that help build resiliency in the face of increasing challenges, systemic risks and others, and to really see about how people are thinking about supporting societies in their transition to a more sustainable future.”
“We’re really thinking about how we can future proof a business that’s 90% digital and 10% brick and mortar, or its products are 90% intangible and 10% tangible, when 20 years ago those statistics would would have been the exact opposite.”
Lipman also said that bringing its Lloyd’s Lab cohort program to the Americas for the inaugural time provided Lloyd’s with a chance to underscore thought leadership and the emergence of technologies, products, and services that can propel a resilient insurance market forward.
“We get excited each time a new cohort is about to start because of the potential for the new ways of thinking that they’re going to bring and how they’re able to help us reduce our reliance on the norm on established ways of doing things. Lloyd’s has been around for 330 years now, and we’re proud of our history of history of innovation, but there’s lots for us to learn.”
Successful entrants to the cohort will gain access to expert mentors, key advisors, potential trading partners, and investors. The latest cohort focuses on three themes:
- New ProductsData,
- Models & Processes,
- Building Resilience in an Ever-Changing Americas Landscape.
Following their participation, the companies involved are provided access to a platform for product launches, which has proven instrumental in nurturing offerings such as flash flood coverage and parametric cargo solutions.
Participants under the theme of “Building Resilience in an Ever-Changing Americas Landscape” from the US, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean will have access to regional specialists. Selected businesses will have the flexibility to work from Lloyd’s in London or other suitable locations across the Americas, with office spaces available. Lipman explained that support for businesses seeking mentorship and guidance doesn’t end with the conclusion of the cohort, signalling a commitment to ongoing collaboration and development within the insurance landscape.
“It remains really important for the Lab to provide a safe place for new ideas and for nonstandard risks to be explored, as well as support at the critical final stages of bringing a solution to the market,” he said.
Lipman added: “There’s such a diversity of expertise and thought out there, that whether a business is accepted into the Lab or not, it is really a productive and useful exercise in its own right to see what kinds of ideas are out there.”
