Record Insurtech Funding in Q4 2019

Oh, insurtech. What more can we say about you that we haven’t already said? Every time we think this space is may be due for a slight cooldown, we read reports that it continues to reach record funding levels. 

Quarterly insurtech funding reached an all-time high of $1.99 billion during Q4 2019, according to the above-linked Business Insider article. The total for all of 2019 was a record $6.35 billion, up 52.2% from $4.17 billion in 2018. Of that total, funding for property/casualty led the way with $3.519 billion, followed by $2.829 billion on the life and health side. 

"2019 was a record year for insurtech investment and we are seeing no signs of a slowdown in 2020,” said Matt Perlman, Principal, IA Capital Group. “Industry incumbents continue to bring to bear large amounts of capital in direct investment, and there is a complementary trend of more and more insurers participating in external strategic insurtech VC programs, led by IA Capital as the largest and longest tenured independent insurtech-focused investor. All of this bolsters deal volume and valuation. 

The opportunities we and our clients are most interested in fall into three main categories. First, distribution — companies that offer alternatives to traditional agent-based channels or create efficiencies within the broker-carrier relationship. Second, new products to address emerging areas of risk/growing categories like cyber, weather, e-commerce, sharing economy, and pet insurance. Third, companies that address the insurance value chain, including cutting edge data analytics for underwriting, claims adjudication and ongoing risk management, and better policyholder engagement."

Insurtech, like fintech before it, seems to show no signs of slowing down. We wouldn’t bet against funding to reach even more record levels in 2020.