2019 Global Insurance Accelerator Cohort Reflects Evolution of InsurTech

DES MOINES, IA – January 9, 2019 – The Global Insurance Accelerator (GIA) will welcome 10 exciting InsurTech companies who will make up the 2019 cohort to Des Moines, Iowa on January 15.

“It has been an incredible journey,” said Brian Hemesath, managing director of the GIA. “Today, employees of insurance companies, like those representing our investors as GIA program mentors, are more equipped to ‘speak’ startup, and that accelerates opportunities for both sides. Mentorship educates and empowers individual employees and ensures insurance companies are fully-equipped for pilots and partnerships which will take advantage of the new ideas each cohort brings to the table.”

Representing technologies which deliver value for all insurance lines of business, the selected companies will participate in the GIA’s action-packed, mentor-driven program. This year’s GIA cohort teams are developing and delivering new products and business models for buying insurance, cyber risk protection, underwriting automation, advisor services, digital transformation, claims resolution, pension planning, and employee benefit management, and include:

• BriteBee enables consumers to shop for trusted insurance agents in an online marketplace.
• Cowbell simplifies and expedites the process of obtaining accurate cyber insurance coverage for businesses by mapping insurable threats to the type of exposures.
• ebbie specializes in e-application development and underwriting automation for life and health insurance companies.
• everyday life makes purchasing the right life insurance policy easier using artificial intelligence (AI) to provide high-quality advisor services and personalized recommendations.
• Friendly digitizes and structures documents and notes to enable automation of time-consuming, mundane tasks, such as data entry, document indexing, and adjudication for simple products.
• Liscena automates the decisions and interactions between policyholders and insurance companies with AI-powered claims adjusters.
• Micruity supports entities looking to synergize employee benefits with human resources (HR) strategy by enabling the addition of financial-focused insurance products, such as deferred annuities, to the company pension plan.
• Predictive Health Partners leverages real-time predictive analytics that is personalized and conveniently delivered thru a mobile app to help employees be better consumers and managers of health care.
• Prosper eDNA increases accuracy and planning for insurance companies working in life, long-term care and annuities by making accurate lifespan predictions, and enabling personalized epigenetic (not genetic) monitoring.
• The Sentence Data Refinery assists insurance companies by reading and interpreting sentence data related to events and activities in claim and underwriting files with speed and accuracy.

The GIA’s 100-day program consists of countless 1:1 meetings with insurance professionals, site visits to insurer offices, networking events, discussions with seasoned InsurTech founders, education sessions, investor introductions, and much more. The program concludes with final presentations at the Global Insurance Symposium on April 24 in Des Moines.

“One of the most valuable elements of the GIA program is the opportunity to become immersed in the technology and insurance-rich environment in Des Moines in order to gain firsthand industry knowledge and insights from those working and innovating in the field every day,” said Jeff Russell, president of Delta Dental of Iowa and board chair for the GIA.

The GIA is backed by insurance company investors from across the U.S., including Allstate, American Equity Investment Life Holding Company, Delta Dental of Iowa, EMC Insurance, Farm Bureau Financial Services, Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance of Iowa, Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Company, IMT Insurance Company, Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company, Markel Corporation, Principal Financial Group, and SFM Mutual Insurance Company.

For information on becoming an investor, mentor, or program advisor for the GIA, or for more information about the GIA’s InsurTech Week program held annually in the Fall, please visit www.globalinsuranceaccelerator.com.

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 About the Global Insurance Accelerator (GIA)

Launched in 2015, the Global Insurance Accelerator (GIA) fosters innovation in and for the insurance industry via a mentor-driven, 100-day program. GIA supports an annual cohort by providing each graduate company $40K of seed money in exchange for six percent equity. During the program, cohort members get insurance-specific mentoring via 1:1 meetings with industry executives, as well as basic business infrastructure assistance, coaching on garnering investments, and product-specific insights into strategies for increasing applicability to and feasibility for the insurance industry. The GIA extended network includes insurance company investors, startups and mentors from across the global business and insurance communities.  For more details please visit www.globalinsuranceaccelerator.com.