InsurTech NY, which bills itself as the largest InsurTech community in North America, said it will launch a study focused on corporate venture capital in the sector.

Such a project will produce needed insight for an investment sector that’s less than a decade old, according to David Gritz, Managing Director at InsurTech NY.

“The corporate venture community in insurance is one of the fastest forming investment groups. Insurance industry venture capital went from near non-existence in 2013 to more than 200 insurance entities having made investments in startups today,” Gritz said in prepared remarks. “We want to learn from the segment’s rapid growth over the past decade and apply the learnings to future initiatives.”

InsurTech venture capital investment themselves are hitting new highs. Funding reached more than $2.5 billion in the 2021 first quarter, achieving a new global record, according to a recent Willis Towers Watson report. But just eight companies accounted for close to half the total.

InsurTech NY is joining forces with a partner to conduct the study – the IQONIC Hub for Entrepreneurship Research & Education at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. They are looking at organizational structure, best practices and common themes across insurance carrier and broker affiliated venture groups. Plans call for aggregating and anonymizing the research and then sharing it at InsurTech NY’s Corporate Forum planned for Sept. 21 in New York City. The IQONIC Hub for Entrepreneurship Research will analyze the data and compare it to their existing body of research on corporate venturing across several industries including broader financial services.

Subjects of the study will include a wide range of participants such as super-regional carriers, Top 5 carriers and brokers. There will also be a variety of portfolios, from insurers who have made ad-hoc, off-the-balance sheet investments to established corporate venture funds working on their second or third funds.

The assessment can be found at https://cvc2021.paperform.co.

Source: InsurTech NY