Hello Friends! It is time for Labor Day Weekend, hope all are enjoying this long holiday weekend and the unofficial end of summer. Only 3 weeks until ITC 2022 so look for us to be in attendance again this year. This week we are following opportunities in auto insurance, Hippo moves and getting a little help from our friends who we always learn from: |
[1] |
New Opportunities In Auto It was a slow summer for fundraising and the predominate theme for auto insurance has been headwinds caused by macro trends including inflation. So, it was notable this week to see a commercial fleet startup Fairmatic raise $42M in a Series A. This new entity was founded by the founder of driving analytics company Zendrive and has other notable executives leading the company. They will leverage their existing data built on 200 million driving miles and AI models to insure fleets. Elsewhere, fintech player Buckle announced a partnership with an auto MGA. InsureScan is a specialist MGA and will offer a new distribution channel for nonstandard auto products with a digital application process. |
[2] |
Hippo Moves Hippo made moves this week. They have eliminated 10% of their entire headcount including their COO/CIO. This the latest in a series of actions to shore up their financial position and will help to reduce costs as they seek to improve underwriting profitability. Another move they hope to help is the reverse stock split which was overwhelmingly approved this week by shareholders. Like ROOT, they were trying to pull off this reserve split to get their stock price above $1. This will lower the number of shares but may not reverse the downward trend in price. |
[3] |
A Little Help From My Friends .. So, for our last thing of the week, I will rely on a little help from my friends. First off, Ian released part 2 of his blog that I featured as a bonus in the LinkedIn version of this post last week. He explores how an insurance broker would collapse, quite interesting. Finally, while maybe not quite a ‘friend’ someone that is worth following, Matteo Carbone provides analysis about recent insurtech results and what the prospects look like for them to survive. Hopefully, this mention will earn us his friendship. |
Thank you for following us, we appreciate your feedback and continued support. Stay tuned for more info to come. Until next time… stay safe, stay productive! |