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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
A little over a year ago, U.K. challenger bank Starling and automated online insurance advisory Anorak Technologies forged a partnership to bring personalized life insurance options to bank customers. Now, the two companies are back in the fintech headlines with a new offering. Starling announced that it will offer income protection insurance for the self-employed courtesy of its collaboration with Anorak.
“If you’re a freelancer, contractor, or sole trader, you may need income protection insurance to provide peace of mind if something happens that means you can’t work,” Team Starling noted on the company blog this morning. “Everyone has bills to pay, sometimes for a whole family, and if something goes wrong, an insurance provider could cover your outgoing when you don’t have a regular income.”
In order to access the insurance offering, Starling app users simply tap on the Anorak link in the Insurance category of the app. Anorak will guide the user through a quick, free, online assessment during which the user’s Starling Bank transactions are analyzed and the user is given advice on how much income protection and life insurance would be advisable. The technology also lets users know how long they should be covered and why. Starling Bank notes that the intention is to provide income protection and insurance coverage that is not just the most affordable, but is also the best choice for the consumer, as well.
“Bancassurance 3.0 is a reality,” Anorak wrote on its LinkedIn page today. “Technology redefines the way people access life insurance. With Starling Bank we help sole traders easily protect their biggest asset, themselves.”
Anorak demonstrated its Smart Life Insurance solution at FinovateSpring 2018. Embedded into the bank’s mobile app and leveraging bank data to provide quick insurance assessments, Anorak’s technology is designed to make it easy for partners ranging from challenger banks to online retailers to investment platforms to offer their customers personalized insurance options.
Named to FinTech Global’s list of the top 100 insurtech companies, Anorak teamed up with protection and mortgage advice company Albany Park over the summer. The partnership brought telephony protection advice to Anorak’s online platform. Anorak began the year with news that it was joining the FinTech Innovation Lab London’s 2019 cohort – along with fellow Finovate alums Exate Technology and FutureFlow.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London, U.K., Anorak has raised $11.5 million (£9 million) in funding and includes French insurtech startup studio Kamet among its investors. David Vanek is co-founder and CEO.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
On Finovate.com
Around the web
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Around the web
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
FinTech Innovation Lab London has unveiled its 2019 cohort. And among the 20 startups selected, three – Exate Technology, FutureFlow, and Anorak – are Finovate alums.
“The U.K. is a hotbed for fintechs, which are starting to bite at banking revenues,” Julian Skan, executive sponsor of FinTech Innovation Lab London, said. “But banks and insurers are also capitalizing on the opportunity to work with emerging technologies and new talent to compete.”
Skan added, “With our accelerator programme in its seventh year, we’re looking forward to exploring how startups are using the changes to evolve the financial industry for the better.”
The program, founded by Accenture and its partners in 2012, runs for three months between January 7 and March 28. Participating startups will work with executives from banks and insurers such as BlackRock, HSBC, Santander, and Wells Fargo to further develop their business models and solutions. In total, 35 financial institutions are providing mentors for the program.
“The team at Exate Technology (is) extremely proud to have been selected for Accenture’s Seventh Annual FinTech Innovation Lab,” Sonal Rattan, co-founder and CTO of Exate Technology wrote in a post at LinkedIn. “Fantastic kick-off day.” Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, U.K., Exate demonstrated its data middleware IT solution at FinovateEurope 2018. The company’s technology enables users to apply rules to determine how data is accessed. Exate calls the solution “a virtual visa for your data.”
Demonstrating its BigData Analytics Platform at FinovateAsia 2017, FutureFlow provides institutions with a map of movement of money through the financial system. Like “cookies for money,” the company’s solution gives users deep money flow insights, showing where money in each transaction has been before, how quickly it moved, and what good, services, and locations it has covered. Headquartered in New York City, the company was founded in 2016.
Insurtech innovator Anorak offers personalized, regulated life insurance purchasing advice to help insurance consumers get the best policy at for the least cost. The company leverages data science and machine learning – as well as decades of insurance industry experience – to analyze risk and coverage needs, turning bank data into customized insurance solutions. The London, U.K.-based company was founded in 2016, and demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2018.
Interested in fintech in the U.K. and Europe? Join us next month in London for FinovateEurope 2019, February 12 through 14. Live fintech demos, insightful keynotes, and more.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
In a round led by Kamet Ventures – an insurtech startup studio backed by AXA – life insurance recommendation engine Anorak Technologies has raised $6.5 million (£5 million) in new funding. The investment, which takes the U.K.-based company’s total equity financing to more than $11.6 million (£9 million), will be used to fuel further development of and applications for its technology. In a press release, Anorak specifically highlighted plans to use its life insurance recommendation engine as the basis for an advisor platform.
“The life insurance sector is on the verge of transformation and Anorak is leading the way,” Anorak co-founder and CEO David Vanek said. “Kamet’s investment enables us to deliver on our vision. We are committed to using cutting-edge technology to bring (the) life insurance sector into the digital age and make protection advice accessible to the millions unprotected in the U.K.”
Anorak leverages AI, and advanced data science, and actuarial science to build a fully automated advice platform for life insurance consumers. Designed to serve the nine million families in the U.K. that Anorak estimates are underserved, Anorak’s technology and APIs enable distribution partners to offer life insurance recommendations alongside other financial, investment, and e-commerce services.
Guillaume Borie, Chief Innovation for AXA, praised Anorak’s technology as “transformational” and underscored how the recommendation engine could be deployed in a variety of contexts. “(The technology) enables carriers to create a new breed of distribution partnerships from banking to gig economy platforms, whilst also reinventing the experience of existing intermediaries networks,” Borie said.
Anorak Technologies made its Finovate debut at the beginning of the year, demonstrating its platform at FinovateEurope. In September, the company announced that it would provide life insurance advice for users of money management app, Yolt. Also that month, Anorak teamed up with Starling Bank to provide insurance advice for customers of the U.K. mobile-only bank. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in London.
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This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
On Finovate.com
Around the web
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
On Finovate.com
Around the web
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.