InsurTech startups targeting the property/casualty insurance industry proliferated in multiple ways over the last few years. Relatively few of them focus on reinsurers, however, and Will Dove has some thoughts as to why.
Executive Summary
Although reinsurers have made key investments in InsurTech that often benefit their customers and partners, the reinsurance industry has not been directly experiencing the full InsurTech explosion. There are few startups laser-focused on improving the reinsurance business. Not many tech entrepreneurs are familiar with reinsurance; for most, it's a business behind a wall. But now more ReinsurTech startups are beginning to break through, and some see continued growth in ReinsurTech as inevitable.“It’s a complicated business,” said Dove, chairman and CEO of Extraordinary Re, a startup platform designed to help insurers access reinsurance capacity supported by a trading market for institutional investors. “It requires a lot of industry knowledge and expertise that often doesn’t reside in the same brain as people who have the technological capabilities and programming skills.”
That may be, but industry observers and others see interest increasing in InsurTech for reinsurance—or to borrow a term, ReinsurTech—and its potential to transform and modernize the reinsurance market, a sector steeped in tradition and resistant to change.
