Is talent the silver lining in Covid-19?
With so many lives taken so early, and others immeasurably impacted, both with health and loss of work, what could be the silver lining? Almost 1 in 4 Americans (36M) who had a job in February have filed for government assistance since mid-March. There are estimates that COVID-19 insurance claims could top $200B globally. To put that in perspective, the entire US P&C surplus in 2019 was about $800B.
For me, as I’ve been having conversations with carriers and agencies, it has become evident that traditional players are adapting to our current situation, perhaps even better than the insurtech competitors and enablers. So, what opportunity does this bring? It brings the potential for a carrier or agency to attract amazing talent. Many of these affected workers would relish the opportunity to work for a stable employer.
Last month, Coverager published a table of Insurtechs that have begun laying off people. It focused on the more established insurtechs. The number totaled about 300 people impacted. The basic message was that they needed to preserve cash because their market evaporated.
I expanded on their list and have included other companies that I know carriers’ partner with (see Table 1). By no means is the list exhaustive, and right now it identifies about 1,000 people who have unfortunately lost their jobs in companies that have some insurance bend. If you expand this to any fintech or even VC-funded start-up, the number is much higher.
The amount of VC money raised didn’t shield the startup. You could have raised over a $1.3 Billion like Oscar who just announced layoffs of 5% of their workforce, or you were Jetty who raised $40M and laid off 25% of your workforce. There is one bright spot – Ensurem who is expecting to more than double their workforce as the company moved to work from home.
The Talent Opportunity
Many of these affected workers understand insurance and have the technical skills necessary to help a carrier or agency digitally adapt and transform. Layoffs have cut across all areas of the business: product, service, underwriting, customer experience, IT, engineering, data analytics, and many more. This could be a once in a lifetime chance to help the technology transformation in your organizations.
Here are a few resources to help find some of the impacted employees:
- https://layoffs.fyi/ and https://list.layoffs.fyi/ which allows you to search for specific skill sets and reach out to impacted employees.
- https://layoffs.tech which is compiled by Drafted (a social network-based recruiting tool)
If you know of other sites, or people looking for work. Please have them reach out to me, as I am more than willing to pass their names on to other organizations.
Best of luck continuing to meet the needs of your insureds, agents, and employees.
Stay safe!
Table 1: A sample of Insurtechs/Start-ups who have laid off people because of Covid-19
| Name | What they do | Employees | Impacted | Percent | Raised |
| Datarobot | Datarobot provides a platform for automated machine learning and AI. | 1,100 | 200 | 18% | $431M |
| Clover Health | Clover is a health care insurer that focuses on Medicare Advantage. | 560 | 140 | 25% | $975M |
| Metromile | Metromile offers pay as you drive insurance as well as a white label claims management system. | 303 | 100 | 33% | $293M |
| Newfront Insurance | They are a risk manager and broker that has rethought their business using technology and enhanced processes. | 250 | 90 | 36% | |
| Domo | Domo provides a cloud-based BI and analytics system. | 900 | 90 | 10% | $690M |
| Oscar | Oscar is a digital-first health insurance company. | 1,400 | 70 | 5% | $1300M |
| Bold Penguin | Bold Penguin has created an online commercial insurance exchange for independent agents. | 150 | 40 | 26% | $51M |
| Nauto | Nauto is an AI-technology company that’s improving the safety of commercial fleets with an IoT device. | 188 | 40 | 21% | $174M |
| Enigma Technologies | Enigma provides alternative small business data. | 85 | 34 | 40% | $130M |
| Jetty | Jetty sells rental insurance to tenants and acts as a guarantor on leases in exchange for 5 percent to 10 percent of the annual rent. | 75 | 30 | 40% | $40.5M |
| Slice Labs | Slice provides a technology platform to deploy on-demand insurance products. They also market their products. | 85 | 28 | 33% | $36M |
| Trov | Trov provides the technology needed to launch on-demand insurance products. | 79 | 26 | 33% | $114M |
| Blink Health | Blink Health created an online way to get and manage prescriptions. | 236 | 25 | 11% | $165M |
| Ladder Life | Ladder has reinvented life insurance to offer instant, fully underwritten term policies online. | 52 | 13 | 25% | $94M |
| Pillar Technologies | An IoT firm that makes sensors for construction projects allowing for real time risk management. | 16 | $3M | ||
| Heap | Heap offers a smarter way to build digital products. Esurance is 1 client. | 186 | $95M | ||
| Risksense | Risksense provides full spectrum cyber risk-based vulnerability management | 112 | $24M | ||
| Snapsheet | Snapsheet provides and end-to-end, cloud-native claims management platform that leverages technology to allow for remote capture of information. | 305 | $66M | ||
| ADDING | |||||
| Ensurem | Ensurem sells Medicare supplement insurance by enhancing the sales process with technology. | ~50 | 80 | $14M | |
| (Sourced from web searches and http://layoffs.fyi/tracker/) | |||||
About Insurtech Advisors
Insurtech Advisors is dedicated to helping regional insurance carriers plan for the future today. We help you identify and partner with Insurtechs. This enables you to thrive and continue to meet the needs of your members, employees, and independent agents.